


Off I Go

by Jingletown



Category: EXID (Band), K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS, 여자친구 | GFriend (Band)
Genre: Horror, Horror mom is back with a blizzard!, just your average horror blizzard AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jingletown/pseuds/Jingletown





	1. Chapter 1

  _Loose ends, they tangle down a_ _nd then take flight._

 _But never tie us down, they_ _never tie us down._

 _Off I go._ _Where I fall is where I land._

 

* * *

**Hyojin**

* * *

2:34 AM.

She idly made note of the numbers on the cable box, all lined up in their proper order, then scurried across the room, her bare feet freezing against the cold hardwood. She wished she was the type of person who could sleep in socks but Solji always joked that anyone who slept in socks had to be a sociopath. Still, maybe it was worth a dash of sociopathy if it meant she wouldn’t get frostbite every time she got up to pee.

Hyojin lived just outside of Chicago and that night, though the wind had slowed to the point of cessation, the temperature had dipped to an unseasonable 31 degrees. She wasn’t ready for it. Her sweaters were still tucked away in Solji’s closet. It was only November so why in the _fuck_ was it already so cold?

She peed but didn’t bother washing her hands – she wasn’t at work and employees did _not_ need to wash their hands before returning to bed. She had every intention of running back to the comfort of her room just as quickly as she’d run to the ice-cold relief of the bathroom but something stopped her.

There was a light creeping into her room, a light that was out-of-place given the late hour. Hyojin had room-darkening curtains, the kind that blocked out sunlight and permitted her to sleep until noon. (Junghwa joked that it was because Hyojin was a vampire, and Hyojin always had a really clever, really flirty, borderline _dirty_ quip that she was too chicken to ever say to Junghwa’s face.) Still, a tiny light spilled in, slipping between the curtain and the frame in a way Hyojin didn’t know was logistically possible.

What had she paid all that money for if not total darkness?

Still, something kept her from diving back into bed. Something intrinsic. Something that whispered _go take a look_. She stayed frozen in the center of her room, ignoring the way the draft from the living room blew carelessly beneath her door and nipped at her exposed skin. (Socks. Why didn’t she just sleep in socks?)

What could be so bright? A car? Couldn’t be. Her apartment was on the third floor. Even a car parked right outside her window wouldn’t reach her window. Lightning? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense either. Not in November. Equal parts curious and annoyed, she marched to the window, curled her fingers around the edge of the curtain, and yanked it aside.

The world was bright.

The juxtaposition was jarring – her circadian rhythm as well as a few more conscious thoughts dictated that nearly-three-AM equaled _darkness_ but the world was bright. The light was so white that it somehow seemed artificial, reminding Hyojin of the fluorescent tubes that lit department stores.

It was nearly-three-AM but the world was bright.

Then, just as quickly, it was dark again.

For at least a handful of seconds, it had been almost painfully bright, clear as day. Perhaps more so. She’d seen every tree, every car, every pothole from her bedroom window, the neighborhood lit like the sun had risen prematurely.

Then she blinked and things were back to normal. The dark had returned. Things felt calm.

She cocked her head to the side, dazed, confused, still half-asleep.

Had she dreamt it? Was she _still_ dreaming?

Compared to the alternative (and Hyojin had never considered that an alternative even _existed_ in this context), the dark was comforting. Familiar. The sky had taken on an orange hue and the wind picked up like it remembered where it was. It howled ever so slightly, whistling through the glass and making it vibrate in the pane.

At 2:37 AM, it started to snow.

Her alarm went off five hours later. (If she was being technical, it was four-hours-and-twenty-three minutes later. And that wasn’t enough sleep.) When she pulled back those same room-darkening shades, she was surprised to see that it was still snowing.

Snow hadn’t been in the forecast.

She sighed heavily (Solji would have said _dramatically_ but Junghwa would have defended her) and checked her phone, holding her breath as hopefully as one could hold their breath.

_Let class be canceled. Let class be canceled. Please, God, let class be canceled._

Class was not canceled.

Hyojin made up a creative new swear word and went to her closet to find something warm enough to get her to and from the bus stop. Public transportation sucked but she’d been raised by two hopeless optimists so she dug through all of the _cons_ (crying babies, uncomfortable seats, generally stinky fellow passengers) and tried to focus on a _pro_ – at least she didn’t have to walk in the snow.

Biological Sciences was not her favorite class but it wasn’t the worst either. It was better than Intro to Ethics with the kid who was constantly clearing his throat and better than General Calculus that was taught by a racist who tended to spit when he spoke. It wasn’t as good as American Literature or Astronomy but she wasn’t in the mood to read or go outside anyway.

She arrived six minutes before class began with snowflakes melting in her hair and on her shoulders. She was incredibly disappointed to see how many of her peers had skipped class, not because of any moral superiority or concern about the nation’s uneducated youth but because she herself hadn’t had the foresight to skip.

With only fifteen students, it was a small class to begin with, meaning it was noticeable when only _one_ kid didn’t show up. At first glance, she counted six missing and knew that the professor would comment on it. She took her usual seat in the middle of the room, a spot where she could see clearly but stealthily avoid detection if necessary. The girl who typically sat to her right, the one with the pink streaks in her hair, was absent and so was the kid with the anime backpack who sat up front. The out-of-his-element goth kid who sat all the way in the back and played games on his phone was out but Jenna, the only other Asian girl in class, was two rows down and one seat over, rushing to finish the reading that they’d been assigned three days before.

But Hoseok was there.

He sat one row ahead of her, one seat to the right. Hoseok was… strange. Definitely not in the same way that the goth kid or throat-clearing-guy were strange but undeniably strange.

He was, to say the very least, antisocial. He had something of a resting bitch face which Hyojin didn’t really understand because he also had something of a resting baby face. How could those two coexist in one man? Was he just a bitchy baby? She figured he was about her age, both of them on the older end of the college sophomore spectrum. Had he gotten a late start? Or was he like her, easily-distracted and unsure about his future?

She’d never know because Hoseok never spoke. Hyojin wasn’t sure whether the professor was intimidated by the way he seemed to glare at everything or whether she simply didn’t want to deal with him but Hoseok was never called on to answer questions or share his findings.

Hyojin would have thought him a mute had it not been for the handful of times they’d interacted. Five times, to be exact. Three times, he’d asked to borrow a pen. (All three times, he’d given it back at the end of class.) Twice they’d exchanged notes. Once, she’d given him a piece of gum. All five times, he’d been perfectly polite but somehow cold. It was clear that he had no real interest in talking to her (or anyone else) but all five times, he’d needed something.

Why she was the one person in class he was willing to talk to, she’d likely never be sure.

That morning, he sat where he always did, a red beanie on his head, a denim jacket buttoned over a red hoodie. He was staring into space, something he did frequently, and as Hyojin dug around her backpack for her preferred blue ink pen, she tossed a few words in his direction.

“Didn’t expect it to snow like this,” she said. There were three rectangular windows on the far wall and Hyojin craned her neck enough to see into the courtyard. Snow blanketed the ground, hiding the grass, and covered a spiny, leafless tree near the sidewalk. There had to be at least three inches on the ground already. “Didn’t expect it to snow at all. Can’t believe so many people skipped class on account of a little ice.”

Hoseok glanced over his shoulder, acknowledging that she’d been speaking to him, but simply grunted in response.

Hyojin didn’t know what to make of that and so she didn’t.

She didn’t need to.

A second later, their professor walked in looking cold and tired. Her long, brown coat was dusted with snow and the hat on her head was askew. It was true that this particular professor almost always looked a mess but that morning, it was abundantly clear that the weather had interfered with her routine. She was without her usual cup of coffee and if her expression was any indication, her mood was foul.

“Good morning,” she huffed, dropping her bag gracelessly onto her desk. “Let’s begin, shall we?” She peered up, took a quick look around the room, saw who was in attendance and who wasn’t, then said, “Looks like a few of our friends took a snow day.” She opened her mouth to say something else but then shook her head and repeated, “Let’s begin.”

But Hyojin’s head was everywhere in the world but class that day. She couldn’t stop looking out the window, couldn’t stop checking the weather on her phone. She wasn’t alone in that – everyone but Hoseok seemed distracted, restless, fidgeting in their seats and counting the seconds until they could leave. Even the professor seemed preoccupied, speaking quickly and unclearly as her eyes darted between the students and the windows.

What was it about the snow that made everyone so anxious?

Hyojin couldn’t speak for any of them. Personally, she was most worried about the bus schedule. She was refreshing the app every thirty seconds, expecting to see delays and detours but hoping with her entire heart that she’d somehow be able to get home on-time once class was over.

The professor was saying something about DNA but Hyojin barely heard her. Outside, the wind was picking up. Hyojin could see the way the lone tree bent and swayed. Beside her notebook, her phone vibrated and Hyojin’s heart skipped two beats, sure that her bus had been delayed and her entire day would be pushed back because of it.

When she saw that it was a text from Junghwa, her heart skipped three beats.

**_Crazy weather we’re having! Are you in class?_ **

Hyojin shot a look to her professor, unsurprised and relieved to see that she was not looking back. She picked up her phone, fighting the urge to smile, and sent a message.

**_I am in class. Nobody wants to be here. I think my professor is about to call it and go make snow angels in the courtyard._ **

In front of her, Hoseok was twirling his pen between two fingers. He must not have been overly concerned about how he was getting home.

**_LOL I’m off until Monday but I don’t want to leave my apartment. Apparently the roads are really bad._ **

Hyojin knew that to be true. She’d checked Facebook, Twitter, two weather apps and a local news page and they all said the same thing. The roads were bad.

**_Don’t go out. Stay inside. Netflix and lots of blankets._ **

While she waited for a text back, Hyojin checked the transit app again. No delays yet but she knew it was coming, felt it in her gut. This day was going to be a giant inconvenience from start to finish. There was no way around it.

**_I have no food in my house. The Weather Channel thinks the storm might get worse. I’m thinking I should go to my brother’s house._ **

In fact, The Weather Channel seemed to be incredibly unsure of themselves. The snow had been unexpected and one of the meteorologists had stumbled as he tried to predict what would come next. Hyojin had already seen three memes about it. Nobody knew anything. It was the way of the world.

**_Don’t go anywhere, okay? I can bring you some groceries after class. Seriously, if the roads are that bad_ now _then it means they’re only going to get worse. Stay inside and stay safe, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I get out._**

Hyojin winced as she hit _send_ , somehow able to see Solji’s expectant, judgmental, amused face in her mind’s eye.

 _Okay, okay_ , she thought. _I know what you’re going to say. You don’t have to say it._

Maybe she’d been in love with Junghwa from the very first day she’d met her. Maybe she thought about her constantly. Maybe she was so hopelessly smitten that she was all-too-willing to go grocery shopping in a snow storm without any source of reliable transportation. And maybe she was too much of a wuss to tell her. But did Solji always have to give her such grief about it? Did she always have to make that face?

**_You’re the best_.**

The text ended with two heart emojis and Hyojin’s started skipping beats again.

“Get it together, Hyojin,” she said under her breath. “Get it together.” Her phone vibrated again and she perked up, expecting more hearts, but her stomach contracted when she saw it was a notification about her bus. Delayed. Just as she’d figured. “Shit fucking fuck,” she hissed. The professor had stepped outside to take a phone call, something Hyojin only noticed after the fact, and Hoseok turned in his chair to look at her.

“Everything okay?” he asked. Though his words seemed genuine, his face was disinterested.

Hyojin answered him anyway.

“No,” she said. “My bus got delayed. The roads are bad. I’m not sure how I’m getting home now.” She was speaking quickly and when she realized it, she took a deep breath and waved her hands dismissively. “Forget it. It’s fine. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s just a little bit of snow. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Hoseok’s expression changed very slightly, a very minor clench of his jaw, a nearly imperceptible arch of his eyebrows, but then he just nodded once and turned back around.

While she waited for the professor to come back, Hyojin sent a text to Solji.

**_I’m going to assume that the café is closed on account of snow and general chaos?_ **

And “general chaos” was the term Hyojin would have used to describe what she was seeing on social media. They were in Chicago – they were used to snow. So why was everyone losing their shit?

Professor Reynolds returned, eyebrows knit together, a certain impatience in her walk.

“Okay, kids,” she said, gathering the few items she’d just taken from her bag. “You don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here and I want us all to get home alive. So what do you say we just get out of here, huh? All of this can wait until Tuesday. Class dismissed. Get home safely and make sure you do the reading.” Up front, a boy in a high school varsity jacket pumped his fist and made a _whoop_ noise. Professor Reynolds just nodded. “ _Whoop_ indeed, Chester. Go home.”

As her classmates gathered their belongings and made mad dashes for the door, Hyojin stayed put.

How was she going to get home?

Hoseok took his time packing up his notebook and travel mug and when he noticed Hyojin, he nodded his chin to her.

“You plan on staying here?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek.

“Maybe,” she suggested, then lifted her phone and waved it. “My bus is going to be late. Might as well stick around, get some coffee from the student lounge.”

“The coffee in the student lounge is sewage,” he said. He threw his backpack over his shoulder, then shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. His dark eyes kept darting to the window but Hyojin could tell he was trying to hide it. She could also tell that he was uncomfortable.

“All that money for tuition,” she said, zipping up her own bag, “and they can’t invest in decent coffee. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, huh?” She shrugged, checked her phone again as though something major would have changed, then said, “See you on Tuesday. Get home safe.”

She was halfway out the door when Hoseok said, “Let me give you a ride home.”

His words were reluctant, almost pained, like the suggestion alone was enough to inconvenience to him. But he’d said it and now he was staring at her, maybe staring _through_ her, waiting for a response.

“I don’t want to put you out,” Hyojin said, nearly stammering from the surprise of his offer.

“It’s fine,” he said, moving to catch up with her. “You shouldn’t have to wait around. It’s dangerous. You’re probably on my way home anyway. Come on. I’m parked by the library.”

Hyojin was conflicted.

On one hand, she wanted to go Junghwa. Maybe today was finally the day she manned up and told her how she felt. The snow was romantic, wasn’t it? She could take the late bus to a grocery store, buy some soup and cookie dough and fancy boxed tea and take a second bus to Junghwa’s neighborhood. They could get snowed in together. It could be the start of a beautiful love story.

On the other hand, she really didn’t want to be stranded in the snow, waiting for a bus that may or may not ever show up to rescue her.

She followed Hoseok to the library, then out the door, into the parking lot and into a red, four-door Prius. They didn’t speak until Hoseok asked her address. He typed it into his phone and they didn’t speak again until they made it to a main intersection to find that the street that led into Hyojin’s neighborhood was closed.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. He turned to her. “Has this street ever been closed before?”

She was as confused as he was.

“Not since I moved in,” she said.

“Is there a detour?” he asked. “A side street?”

She shook her head and pointed to the sign that blocked their way.

“This road leads to all the side streets.” She squinted, thinking hard, but hit a wall. Hoseok had done a nice thing offering her a ride but she didn’t want to burden him any more and so she said, “Pull over up there and I’ll walk the rest of the way. It isn’t too far.”

“No,” he said. His tone was almost stern, firmer than it had ever been in any of their past interactions. He must have realized how he sounded because he repeated it, softer, and added, “It’s not safe.” He closed his eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and spoke again more evenly. “Why don’t I take you back to my house? You can wait there until the snow calms down and this street opens up. It shouldn’t be more than a few hours.” Each word was careful and deliberate. Once again, they sounded forced. It was like he felt a _need_ to offer but no actual desire.

Because Hyojin had no choice, she agreed.

“Thanks, Hoseok,” she said quietly.

He mumbled something and pulled away from the intersection, driving them to a quiet suburb twenty minutes away. He parked in a long driveway outside a small, one-story house with peeling paint and led her inside, retrieving a key from beneath the mat.

The interior was as underwhelming as the exterior suggested. The front door led into a small living room with a grey couch and a brown armchair. He put his key on a hook then made a beeline for the TV. He turned it on, flipped to a local news station, then pointed through a doorway.

“The kitchen is in there,” he said and then jerked his thumb towards the hallway. “Bathroom is the first door on the left. I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared down the hall, past the bathroom, and Hyojin heard a door close. Putting her jacket and bag on the armchair, she sat on the very edge of a couch cushion and watched the news. Viewer-submitted cell phone videos showed icy roads, falling snow and general panic. People drove too fast, shoveled in vain and pushed and shoved to buy loaves of bread.

“It’s just snow,” Hyojin said to no one. “What is going on?”

Her phone rang in her pocket, startling her, and she fished it out in time to answer a call from Junghwa.

“Are you out of class?” she asked.

“I am,” she said, already sweating. “Sorry I didn’t call you. My bus got delayed.”

“Are you okay?” Junghwa asked. “Are you safe?”

It was cute the way she jumped right into a frenzied panic. It was, oddly enough, something Hyojin liked about her. She was a little flighty, a little spacey, kind of like a cute squirrel.

“I’m fine,” she said. “A friend offered me a ride home. My street was blocked off so he took me back to his place.”

She realized that _friend_ was a bit of an overstatement but what else was she supposed to call him? Her peer? Her classmate? Her associate? That weird, brooding kid she gave a piece of gum to that one time?

“I really think I should go to my brother’s,” Junghwa said. “People are already freaking out. What if it gets worse?”

“Junghwa, trust me. You are safer in your apartment than anywhere else. Do you have something to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Enough to get you through the night?”

There was a pause and Hyojin could feel Junghwa’s charming petulance.

“Yes.”

“Then stay put. As soon as the plows take care of the roads and the buses get back on schedule, I’ll come over. I’ll bring food. I’ll sleep on the couch. We’ll finally get caught up on _Black Mirror_. Just stay put for now. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Hyojin could hear Junghwa’s smile through the phone.

“Okay,” she said, sighing heavily. “I’ll stay home. Keep me posted, okay? And tell your friend that I said thank you for driving you home.”

Hyojin shot a glance at the dark hallway down which Hoseok had vanished.

“Yeah,” she appeased. “I’ll do that. Talk to you soon.”

She hung up, slid her phone back into her pocket and pointed her eyes at the television screen.

People fighting for eggs and milk, pushing and shoving and carrying on, all over six inches of snow?

What was going on?

Muting the TV because she was already sick of hearing about the selfishness of panicked citizens, Hyojin got up and looked around.

Hoseok’s entire house was as non-descript and mysterious as he was. There were no pictures on the walls, no real personal effects to speak of. She poked her head into the kitchen to see that it was clean but uninteresting. There was a table with four chairs, a low-budget coffee maker, a white refrigerator with no magnets and no photos, and a blue dishrag hanging above the sink.

She hadn’t seen any of this coming. Not the snow, not the chaos, not the sudden urge to run through the storm and confess her undying love for Junghwa and _especially_ not the part where she ended up in the house of the boy she sometimes leant her bi-sci notes to.

Her phone buzzed again, a text from Solji confirming that the café was, in fact, closed, and Hyojin returned to the couch. She reached for the remote and changed the channel to some kids’ show, thinking that anything was better than watching that clip of supermarket chaos again.

As some cartoon alien sang a song about dental hygiene, Hyojin sat back against the couch cushions and tried to think of something witty to say back to Solji.

She hoped that Hoseok would wrap up whatever he was doing and join her in the living room. Though she didn’t really think she’d enjoy his company, she figured it would make her feel less like a squatter and more like a guest.

She never did think she’d be sitting on his couch, praying for him to hurry up and join her, but it seemed as though the universe was determined to surprise her.

It certainly wasn’t how she’d expected to spend her day.

 

* * *

**Hoseok**

* * *

 

It certainly wasn’t how he’d expected to spend his day.

Was he fucking stupid?

He was fully aware of the fact that he’d only offered Hyojin a ride home because she reminded him of Wonwoo.

He wasn’t happy about it but he was aware of it.

Wonwoo always said self-awareness was important and Hoseok was up to his eyeballs in the stuff.

He was self-aware and he was fucking stupid.

He was self-aware _because_ he was fucking stupid, and he was self-aware that he _was_ fucking stupid.

Wasn’t mindfulness a thing of beauty?

He’d paced for a while, tried to clear his head, tried to do some fucking _namaste_ breathing. Hoseok hated yoga but when he’d first moved from Korea, he’d fallen head over heels for this girl who dragged him to classes. He loved her enough to do yoga, to drink tea, to watch some adult cartoon about a cartoon horse. Ultimately, he loved her enough to cut her free, knew that she deserved better than someone who’d bury himself every time the weather dipped below thirty-two degrees.

Now he sat on the edge of the bed. The house was quiet enough that he could hear the news playing in the living room, and quiet enough that he could hear Hyojin’s conversation with someone named Junghwa.

 _It’s nothing to worry about. Nothing’s going on. It’s just a snowstorm. It’s just snow. It’s_ just _snow._

Hyojin was the only person in bi-sci Hoseok didn’t hate. She wasn’t up her own ass like Jenna, wasn’t constantly running her mouth like Chester and didn’t make it a point to wear black jeans with _chains_ like that goth kid whose name was either Eric or Derek.

But _didn’t hate_ was very different from _like_.

He didn’t _like_ Hyojin. She was just an approachable girl who always brought two pens and Big Red gum. That was all he knew about her. She had pens, cinnamon gum and decently legible handwriting. They weren’t friends. They were barely classmates. Why the fuck did he offer her a ride home? Why the fuck did he offer her _his_ home?

He pulled his beanie from his head and ran a hand anxiously through his hair.

_It’s not the same. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a snowstorm. It’s. Just. Snow._

He tossed a sideways glance at his closet but didn’t get up, didn’t make any motions to go inside.

_No. Not yet. Not again. It’s just snow._

He stood again, returned to pacing. He felt better when he was moving.

“Snap out of it, Hoseok,” he said quietly, slapping left cheek with his right hand. “Snap out of it.”

In the living room, Hyojin changed the channel.

He couldn’t blame her. It was always tough in the beginning. Those images were always hard to parse, the notion of humans behaving so badly tough to swallow. It was one thing to watch televised chaos when it was being broadcast from some faraway land. The term _overseas_ seemed to create this invisible barrier, one that kept people safe. If it was happening overseas, it was no big deal. There was a whole ocean between them and the danger.

But this was not overseas. It was not abroad. It was not foreign. It was very, very domestic and happening just up the road from their bi-sci class. People throwing elbows to get the last can of beef stew, people speeding down the highway and fishtailing themselves into telephone poles.

They had no idea what was coming.

_Nothing is coming. It’s just snow. It’s not the same. It’s not the same. It’s not the same._

Hoseok swallowed hard, stopped pacing.

He stared longingly at his closet door one last time, then turned on his heel and exited his bedroom.

“What did the news say?” he asked, standing up straighter. He’d gotten very good at pretending to be normal. He didn’t necessarily bother putting up any of his Normal Guy defenses in bi-sci and so it was likely that Hyojin thought he was a freak but Hoseok didn’t care about any of that.

“People are crazy,” Hyojin replied. Her back had been to him but now she turned, resting her arms on the back of the couch. She was objectively very pretty but not remotely Hoseok’s type. There had been a time, way back before his life fell apart and his world turned upside down, where he would have been scared shitless to even look in her direction, regardless of his type. But that felt like centuries ago. Now she was just a girl and he was just a guy and none of it mattered. “No weatherman in the state seems to know what the fuck is going on. It started snowing last night and it hasn’t stopped.”

Hoseok’s whole body tensed up.

“All over the state?” he asked, throat going dry. “Not just Chicago?”

Hyojin shook her head, blonde hair spilling over her shoulders.

“They say it started pretty lightly but it’s at six inches now and starting to pick up.” She shifted in her seat. “About my street being closed…” Her voice trailed off. Hoseok was only half-listening but when she stopped speaking, he remembered basic social customs and the rules that came with them.

“You can sleep on the couch,” he said. His tone wasn’t as cold as it had been for his last two generous offers and Hyojin noticed. He wasn’t as cold but he did sound distracted, like his mouth was working without the permission of his brain. He blinked a few times, grounded himself, then looked up at Hyojin. “Sleep on the couch.” He spoke with more confidence now and wondered in the back of his mind if Hyojin could tell he was faking it. “I’ll drive you home in the morning when the roads are clear.”

“Thank you,” she said after a beat. Her words were rushed, an exhale. She was uncomfortable, felt like she was imposing, but he had neither the presence of mind nor the time to consider her a burden.

She was just a girl. He was just a guy. It was just some snow.

_That’s all this it. That’s all this is._

“You’re welcome,” he said. Same distracted tone, same dead-inside, dead-quiet deadpan.

“I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow,” she appended quickly. “I promise. If the roads still aren’t clear, I’ll go to a friend’s house. She lives close by. I won’t put you out any more than I already have.”

He’d stopped listening again. She continued to ramble, continued to try and appease what she thought was a man annoyed by an unexpected houseguest, but she was wrong and so he’d stopped listening.

Hoseok bit the inside of his cheek, looked back at his bedroom door, imagined his closet door and then shut his eyes.

He didn’t want to see any of it. Didn’t want to see the snow, didn’t want to see the pretty girl, didn’t want to see the doors. Outside, the beginnings of a winter storm raged on and Hoseok hoped against hope that it was merely that.

A winter storm.

A winter storm before winter even began.

A winter storm that somehow blanketed the entire state of Illinois with absolutely no warning.

Just a winter storm.

_It’s not the same, damn it. It’s not._

“I’ll get some blankets,” he said, his words running together.

Clumsily, he darted back down the hallway, ran back for the safety of his room, slammed his door and then leaned against it.

If she hadn’t thought he was a freak before, she did now.

But it didn’t matter.

He remembered his ex-girlfriend and tried to remember those deep yoga breaths.

But when he closed his eyes, he remembered Jimin.

He remembered Wonwoo.

_It’s just snow. It’s just a blizzard. It’s not the same as last time. It’s not. This isn’t happening again. No. It’s not. It can’t be._

_Not again._

 

* * *

  **Yuju**

* * *

 

She had no idea anything was wrong until the morning after the fact.

Yuju was from Vermont – she’d snow before. She was under the impression that Chicago was cold, too, so shouldn’t people at school have been used to it?

She’d been home alone when the snow started but that in itself came with two footnotes. The first was that _home_ actually meant _crappy dorm_. The second was that she wasn’t technically supposed to be alone. She had a roommate, a girl named Jihyo, but Jihyo lived off-campus with her boyfriend and didn’t tell the school or the RA so Yuju was usually alone unless Jihyo got herself into some sort of lover’s quarrel.

For that reason, Yuju had been home (dorm) alone. She was awake because she was always awake, a night owl, something of a live wire. Was she doing homework? Of course not. She had boys to do that for her. She’d been watching something on her laptop, some anime a friend had recommended.

But that came with footnotes, too.

Because Yuju didn’t _have_ any friends.

In fact, the friend referenced in the anime recommendation was just someone she followed on Instagram.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want friends.

She did.

And it wasn’t that she was without charm.

She was filled to the brim with charm, charisma, feminine wiles – everything she needed to get shit done easily and effectively but nothing she needed to actually make friends.

She was a sophomore. It stood to reason that she should have some friends by now, some people she texted about assignments, some acquaintances she met in the clubs she was supposed to be joining, some peers she could eat lunch with, a circle of colleagues, _something_.

Yuju had none of those.

That wasn’t to say she lived her life in isolation. It would be a waste of her looks and her skills to shut herself away and so she didn’t. She used the tools she’d been given to make her life easier. She smiled brightly and batted her long eyelashes at two boys – Lee Seokmin and Lee Jooheon – and they did all of her homework for her. She squeezed the scrawny biceps of a kid named Jongdae who lived down the hall and he brought her free food from the restaurant where he worked. She laughed at the jokes of an awkward teenage boy who worked at the mini-mart up the street and he gave her free coffee and doughnuts three times a week.

Technically speaking, she wasn’t alone but much more literally, she was incredibly lonely.

The snow began all at once but fell softly for the first few hours. She noticed it a little after two-thirty. When her computer forced a software update and forced her to take a break from binging, she got up to stretch. She happened to look out the window, happened to catch sight of snowflakes falling from the sky.

She hadn’t seen the light that came before it, too close to the screen to notice and too wrapped up in the show to care, but she wouldn’t have doubted or challenged it if someone else said they did.

Yuju simply didn’t question the unknown the way most people did.

Snow hadn’t been in the forecast, something she checked regularly because she didn’t have a car (there was a kid named Boo Seungkwan who was happy to drive Miss Daisy as long as she praised him) and so the storm surprised her.

Briefly, she considered how unexpected snow would interfere with her plans but those worries were quickly put to bed. There was nothing in class she couldn’t make up, no notes or assignments she couldn’t charm out of one of her boys, and so she preemptively declared a snow day.

Besides, she was almost certain there was another Instagram-endorsed anime waiting for her somewhere.

Her computer rebooted and she watched until the sun rose. Eventually, her eyelids got heavy, her body stiff, and she pulled her comforter over her head and slept like a woman who’d done something much more strenuous than watch cartoons in a dark room.

How she managed to sleep twelve hours following virtually no activity was a secret between Yuju and her own DNA but when she was awoke, she was surprised by two things – the snow and the silence.

It was snowing harder now, sideways, and the wind rattled her windows. There were several inches already on the ground, drifts forming in the courtyard, icy patches on the sidewalk. She’d fallen asleep during a dusting but woken up on the other side of a blizzard.

Because something deep inside her lizard brain had triggered some sort of fight-or-flight response, Yuju dove out of bed, changed into something cuter and warmer than her pajamas and wandered out towards the cafeteria.

Somebody was bound to know something.

But there weren’t any _somebodies_ to speak of.

The cafeteria was empty. So were the hallways. Yuju heard no speaking, no laughing, no silverware clanking, no pages turning. There were a few backpacks around, a few jackets, a stray notebook here and there, but no actual _people_ , leaving her to wonder if an Instagram influencer’s anime recommendation had caused her to inadvertently sleep through the rapture.

She fished her phone out of her jacket pocket but realized right away that she didn’t have anybody to text. Post-rapture, who do you reach out to if you have no friends?

She walked carefully back to her dorm, each step seeming to echo and boom loudly off the walls. Her fingers twitched, her gut stirring prematurely despite not knowing all the details. Was it juvenile to be so afraid when there was no apparent threat, no apparent danger?

The sound of a closing door nearly sent her out of her skin. She spun quickly, turned around just in time to see a boy in a bright blue hoodie exiting a dorm room with a duffle bag on his shoulder.

“Hey!” she shouted. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?”

She didn’t recognize him. He was a tall brunette with ears that stuck out and she was pretty sure he was a few years older but there he was, in her hallway, ready to run. He looked her up and down, appearing almost as confused as she was, then spoke.

“The snow is getting worse,” he said. “Classes are all canceled. Everyone’s going home before they get trapped here.” He nodded his chin at her, gesturing vaguely with his free hand. “You should get out of here, too. Go home. Hurry.”

“Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”

He took off down the hallway in a mild jog and Yuju stayed exactly where she was.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

Post-rapture and pre-apocalypse, where did you go if you had no place to call home?

It was 6:38.

For a good, long while, Yuju stood in her room and stared at the window. When it rained heavily, it was described as coming down in buckets. What was the appropriate phrase when it snowed this hard? Though dark, the sky looked orange. With goosebumps on the back of her neck and chills shooting up her spine, Yuju wished haplessly for a roommate.

In spite of herself, she wished for a friend.

Then, when that wave of self-pity washed away, she told herself to buck up.

She’d survived a lot worse than a November snowstorm.

“Come on, Yuju,” she said. “Focus. You can figure this out.”

She knew she didn’t want to stick around any longer than she had to. She knew she didn’t want to wait out the storm all by herself. She had no idea how long it would last, no idea if the school planned on shutting down entirely, no idea how long the random food in her room would last.

In the morning, when the sun was up and the snow had slowed, she’d bundle up and hit the road. She didn’t have anywhere to _go_ but she knew where to start. The convenience store, the one with the coffee and doughnuts. They’d likely be open. Price-gouging, yes, but open. She could start there, get some information, regroup. At the very least, she could stock up on supplies. Seeing the bagboy with his goofy smile and love-struck teenage gaze was absolutely better than sitting alone, waiting for the windows to break free of their hinges.

And that was exactly what Yuju did.

Wired from too much sleep, she sat beside the window and watched the snow pile up. Sometimes it slowed. Other times, it got heavier. Occasionally, it got so bad that she couldn’t see the building across the way. Once or twice, it seemed to stop entirely. For a few minutes at dawn, she dozed off, forehead pressed up against the frosted glass, but her alarm went off, waking her with a start and reminding her of her goal.

The sun was up. The snow had slowed.

Yuju Choi draped herself in as many layers as she could – a t-shirt, a sweater, her winter jacket, leggings, jeans, two pairs of socks, a yellow hat, her favorite pair of boots and a bright pink scarf – and threw a couple of things into an old backpack.

She moved from her dorm to the hallway to the main entrance, unsurprised and uncomfortable to see that her school had become a ghost town in less than twenty-four hours, and stopped when she reached the lobby.

It was strange to see, all the hustle and bustle and _life_ replaced so quickly with paranoid desertion, but there it was.

She stood for another minute, taking it all in, a voice inside her head telling her to remember this moment because it was the last time she’d ever see this lobby, this _building_ , again.

Then she pushed open the front door, wincing at the cold, and started to walk.

 

* * *

**Jun**

* * *

 

Most kids ducked into the C-Wing hallway to smoke cigarettes but Jun did it to call his mother.

It was day thirteen-and-a-half of their fifteen-day trip to Shenzhen, China but the unexpected snow had halted all flights in and out of Chicago, leaving Jun’s parents stranded.

Well, not stranded. They were safely tucked away in the crowded apartment of Jun’s paternal grandmother, the sweet, sickly Nai Nai Wen. She’d fallen ill once again and Chinese law seemed to dictate that one of her children fly home and take care of her, and since Jun’s uncle, the bristly Bo Bo Li, had done it last, it was now his parents’ turn to travel to the homeland.

For what it was worth (and that wasn’t much), Jun had never even _met_ his Nai Nai Wen. His mother insisted there had been a pilgrimage shortly after his birth but Jun’s memories didn’t kick in until around age four and so he hadn’t ever been super invested in Nai Nai Wen. That was why he hadn’t been all that broken up when his parents announced her newest bout with pneumonia.

It wasn’t that Jun wasn’t objectively sad for the old woman. It was just that he was seventeen-years-old and lived nearly eight-thousand miles from Nai Nai Wen, a woman he’d never met who didn’t even send him red envelopes for the new year. When his parents said, “We’re going to China!” Jun’s first thoughts were of parties and girls, not his poor, frail grandma. (And according to Bo Bo Li, she wasn’t all that frail either.)

But thirteen-and-a-half out of fifteen days came and went in the blink of the eye and Jun had neither one party nor one girl to show for it. And that was why, when his mother texted him in frantic Chinese asking him to call her about her trip’s unexpected extension, he’d been more relieved than disappointed.

And _that_ was why Jun was skipping twelfth-grade World Affairs to talk to his mommy.

“It’s okay, mom,” he said. The stairwell smelled like smoke and body odor and Jun cracked the door to the emergency exit to get some fresh air, knowing that a Super Senior named Kim Heechul had disabled the alarm several years ago. The snow came down hard, the wind whipping around the corner of the door, but the smell of the unseasonable frost was preferable to the smell of teenage boys. “Really. I have plenty of food. What’s a few more days? I haven’t burned the house down yet, have I?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding frustrated. “Have you?”

“I have not,” he assured her. “I’ve been a perfect gentleman and I’ll continue to be a perfect gentleman until you can get a flight back here.” The wind kicked up, sending a small drift of snowflakes Jun’s way and he shut the door, cutting off the draft. “What’s one more weekend?” Though she couldn’t see him, Jun still tried to hide his smile. One more weekend meant one more chance at the epic snow day rager of his dreams. By the time his parents got back to the continental United States, he’d be sitting pretty at the top of the food chain. (Did Jun really have the social standing or the funds to throw an epic snow day rager? Probably not but there was no ego quite as powerful or irrational than that of a seventeen-year-old boy.)

“I’m worried,” she said. “You’ll check in with Seungcheol? I’m going to call him.”

“Of course, of course,” he said hastily. “I’ll check in with Seungcheol. But don’t call him now. He’s working. You’re forgetting about the time difference. Speaking of which, what time is it now?”

“Almost midnight,” she said after a beat.

“Ah!” Jun scolded his mother the way she scolded him, knowing it would earn him some good will. “Get to bed! I need to get back to class anyway. I’m sorry you’re stuck in China but please don’t worry about me too much. I will be safe and warm and I’ll text you as much as possible, okay?”

“You better be careful,” she warned. “Check in with Seungcheol. He’s a good boy. He takes care of you.”

“I know, mother,” Jun sighed. “He’s a very good boy. I’ll text him now and call him during lunch, okay? Go to sleep. Don’t worry so much. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

They said their goodbyes (in Mandarin) and Jun told her that he loved her, then he disconnected the call and did a series of silent screams and arm-pumps that might have been more at-home on a professional golf course.

He _did_ have to get back to class and that was a bitch but a few more days alone? A few more chances to throw the party that would finally launch his social career after twelve long years?

Hey, better late than never.

His hand was on the door handle when an announcement came over the PA, beckoning all of the ninth and tenth grade students to the gym, all the juniors to the auditorium and all the seniors to the cafeteria. It was an incredibly vague announcement, one that was met with confused murmurs from every student and staff member in the building, but a moment later, the classroom doors had opened and students flowed into the halls like rushing water.

Jun poked his head out into the hallway then dove directly into the heart of the mob, going with the flow of traffic and hoping the herd would thin once they got near the lobby.

“There he is,” said Hoshi, elbowing Jun in the ribs before hooking his arm around his shoulders. “What? You think we didn’t notice that you ducked out of class and never came back?”

“I had to call my mom,” Jun said and he regretted it the moment the words touched his tongue.

“Mama’s boy,” Hoshi teased. His real name was Soonyoung, Kwon Soonyoung, but _Hoshi_ was some sort of chess club nickname that Jun never understood but used anyway because it made Hoshi happy.

“Shut up,” Jun suggested. “Turns out she and my dad are stuck in China. You know what that means?”

“You get to watch more cartoons in your jammies?” Hoshi asked lovingly.

“No,” Jun said, shoving him off.

“You get to watch porn in your jammies!” Minghao shouted. Jun hadn’t even known that Minghao was there but Minghao was sneaky like that. He was sly, quiet. You never saw or heard him coming. He was always just sort of _there_.

“Split the difference,” said Hoshi. “He’s watching hentai in his jammies!”

“Could you both shut the fuck up for, like, eight seconds and let me talk?” Jun said. They’d reached a fork in the hallway and turned right, the short stretch of corridor leading them into the cafeteria that was already alive with the sound of seniors. They took a spot at an empty table and Jun idly acknowledged the way the vice principal and senior class advisor milled about near the kitchen. “What it _means_ , you scrawny bastards, is that now we can finally have that house party.”

There was a pause. Because of who he was as a person, Minghao was lugging around a half-gallon of iced tea and when he placed it on the cafeteria table, he rested his chin on the lid. He had a way of doing things that made him seem younger and cuter than he was but that only seemed to apply when he was with Hoshi and Jun. He’d somehow convinced the rest of the school that he was a mysterious bad boy. Jun wasn’t sure how that worked since Minghao had light pink hair but there were many things about the fragile and jaded ecosystem of public school that vexed him.

“Remind me what was stopping us the last two weeks,” Minghao said, pointing.

Hoshi slapped Minghao’s shoulder sarcastically, pulling a face because Hoshi was always pulling a face. Rather than flesh and bone, Jun was pretty sure Hoshi was made from rubber and one-liners.

“Bad timing, Jun didn’t get paid last week, nobody likes us, Jun is a mama’s boy, nobody likes us, Jun doesn’t have the guts to trash his parents’ house, nobody likes us–”

“You annoy the shit out of me,” Jun deadpanned. “And I want you to go away.”

There were two falsehoods.

The first was that people did, in fact, like Jun and Minghao. Jun was almost popular because he played soccer and did so quite well. Minghao was almost popular because he’d been the new kid in tenth grade and somehow retained that air of cool, stoic mystery (in spite of his light pink hair). Hoshi was very obviously the least popular member of their trio but neither Jun nor Minghao would ever cop to it.  

The second was that Jun wanted Hoshi to go away.

He didn’t. They’d been best friends since the third grade when Hoshi threw up on the playground and cried and when some older boys made fun of him, Jun had his back and threatened to throw up on the bullies out of spite.

That sort of thing bonded people.

He did, however, annoy the shit out of Jun and that was why Jun tried to snatch the yellow snapback off his head and throw it in the ketchup-stained trashcan near the door. They’d begun a friendly but still violent wrestling match when the vice principal spoke into a microphone Jun didn’t know was hooked up. The screech of mechanical feedback was enough to silence three-hundred-and-fifty-two hormonal teenagers _and_ enough for Jun to break out of Hoshi’s headlock.

“Attention, students,” he said. He was a very stiff, very uptight man, that Mr. Seneca. Jun was sure he’d snap at the waist like a brittle pencil if he tried to bend but he never busted Jun’s balls about the occasional late slip or soccer mishap and so he figured he was an okay-enough guy. “I’m going to make this brief. The snow is expected to pick up over the next few hours and there will be no way to get you all home safely if that occurs. For that reason, we’re going to be closing the school and dismissing you early.”

Cheers. Uproarious cheers. A downright cacophony. Jun was pretty sure a few kids were trying to start the wave. It was chaos. They were all seventeen and eighteen-years-old but they were losing their minds like they were six.

“Snow day!” roared Hoshi and though he laughed, Minghao chopped him in the ribs.

“Quiet down,” the vice principal barked. “We’re telling you this separately because you are the only students who drive on and off campus. We have additional crossing guards on-hand this morning. They are volunteers. They are directing traffic so that you all get home safely. You will respect them. You will do what they say. You will not speed out of this parking lot. You will not…”

Jun’s attention wavered. He didn’t have a car and, therefore, he did not drive. He didn’t care about the protocol for student drivers in the snow because he wasn’t a student driver. He still took the bus like he was in eighth grade and he _hated it_ but that was his reality. There were bigger fish to be fried that day.

How would he get beer for his rager?

His ears tuned back in when he heard the word _bus_.

“Buses will be running as usual,” said the vice principal. “Please step carefully on the sidewalk. We salted them but you still need to be careful. Please do not be rowdy. Your bus drivers will have enough to focus on today. The roads are bad. We want you all to get home safely. That’s it. We just want to get you home.”

The seniors filed out of the cafeteria with a bridled joy burning in their throats. They were a shaken bottle of soda with a tightly twisted cap and they were ready to explode.

No matter how old kids got, they _did_ still love a snow day.

“You want a ride home, brother?” Hoshi asked. Minghao had already said goodbye, already punched them both in the shoulder and exited out the side door to fetch his goofy, green El Camino, but Hoshi lingered. “You know my parents will drive you. We probably have to wait for them to get their shit together but it beats the bus, right?”

Hoshi’s parents were both teachers at Liberty High School. His mother taught ninth grade English and his father AP biology. They were wonderful people, school-spirited and kind. They were the first to volunteer for events, the first to reach out to struggling students. It was why Hoshi was such a good person. (He was annoying as shit but he was a good person and Jun would tell him that to his face.)

“I’m going to bus it,” Jun said. “I need to get supplies.”

Hoshi’s eyebrows rose, a teasing smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

“For the rager?”

“Shut up,” Jun said. “It’s going to happen.”

“Whatever you say, dude,” Hoshi said, smirking. “Get home safe, alright?”

Jun called Seungcheol while he rifled through his locker.

“You good, little man?” Seungcheol asked.

There was less than ten years between them but Seungcheol would forever see Jun as the skinny, long-haired little kid who followed him around the apartment complex that one summer a decade ago. Seungcheol and his mom lived upstairs. His mother had been friends with with Jun’s and on nice days, they used to sit on Jun’s very small balcony and have tea.

But Mrs. Choi had died a year-and-a-half before from a kind of cancer Jun hadn’t known existed. Seungcheol hadn’t moved out, wanted to stay in the apartment where he’d grown up, and he still considered Jun to be the little brother he’d never had.

“I’m fine,” he said. “We’re getting out of school early because of the snow. My parents are stuck in China because all the flights into Chicago got canceled. My mom wanted me to check in with you.”

“Okay,” said Seungcheol. His voice echoed and Jun figured he was using his car’s Bluetooth. “That it?”

“Yeah,” said Jun, shutting his locker. He’d shoved his gym clothes, his hoodie, his headphones, his science notebook and two candy bars into his soccer bag and rejoined the still-steady flow of students trying to make it out the door. “That’s it. You okay?”

“Ah,” Seungcheol sighed. “Jeonghan had to commute to work today and I can’t get ahold of him. I’m driving to his office now to see if he’s there.”

Jun had met Seungcheol’s fiancé a handful of times. He liked him a lot. Jeonghan was prettier than any man Jun had ever seen, pretty in a way usually reserved for girls, but he’d gotten over that. Jeonghan was funny in a dry sort of way. He sniped with his quips, waiting for his moment, and laughed at his own jokes. They’d gotten lunch together once and Jeonghan offered to pay, insisting Jun get whatever he wanted and eat to his heart’s content. Jun had done exactly that and then promptly threw up in the bushes outside the restaurant. (Why did so many of his making-friends story involve vomiting?)

“Is he okay?”

“Probably,” Seungcheol said. “The roads are really bad. Well, I can’t tell if the roads themselves or bad or just the people.” By now, Jun was outside, walking single-file on a too-narrow, too-slippery patch of sidewalk that ran along a line of idling buses. His was always at the front of the line. Good old bus #114. “But I’m worried about him. He never just _doesn’t_ answer my calls. So I’m going to go make sure he’s okay so I don’t lose my mind. You’ll be okay? You’ll get home safe?”

“Of course I will,” he said. “Jeez, so many people are worried about my safety today.”

He heard Seungcheol’s smirk.

“You’re loved, little man. Get over it. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

The phone call ended and Jun looked up long enough to get snowflakes in his eyelashes.

“Junhui,” a voice called. It was Mr. Kwon, Hoshi’s father. “You taking the bus?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your parents back yet?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. Kwon looked him up and down. Jun thought Hoshi was the spitting image of his father – the narrow eyes, the smile, the big cheeks.

“You’ll be okay?”

Jun grinned.

“I’m always okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Get home safe, Junhui,” Mr. Kwon said, clapping his hand down on Jun’s shoulder. “I don’t want my son to have to get a new best friend this late into high school.”

Jun snorted with laughter at the idea of anyone else tolerating Hoshi, then said goodbye and ducked into the safety of bus #114.

It was warm and packed with kids, all of them slightly disheveled from having been rushed out of the school unexpectedly. Jun plopped down into a two-seater near the front, hoping that there’d be enough seats for everyone and that he wouldn’t have to share.

He had the potential to be popular but he was awkward, shy. That was why he needed a rager. He needed to make up points somewhere. How would he ever get a girlfriend otherwise? He couldn’t graduate high school having never kissed a girl. It was too embarrassing. Even _Hoshi_ had kissed a girl named Eunbi at field day sophomore year. Jun was the only guy he knew who still got so flustered and gun-shy whenever a girl walked in the room. Middle school was long gone and he needed to grow up. He just didn’t know how.

 _The rager will change things_ , he thought. _A snow day rager. And maybe some beer. Yeah, lots of beer. Maybe I’ll throw up and meet my soulmate._

The bus ride was slow, bumpy. Jun stared out the window, surprised by the sheer volume of snow. Had it been snowing so hard all morning? Most of the classrooms at Liberty High didn’t have windows so Jun generally had no idea what the weather was doing on any given day. When did it start snowing? How was he so ignorant to the world around him? Were other kids his age like that? Or was he just the least observant guy in the world?

“Junhui!” called the bus driver. “Wen Junhui, you here?”

Jun raised his hand.

“Sir?”

“Your street is a mess,” he said. Jun realized where they were parked – at the end of his block, separated from his street by what looked like tiny, snowy mountains. The plows must have inadvertently blocked everyone in. (Or out, depending.) “Can you walk the rest of the way? It’s only a block and I’ve still got thirty kids to take home.”

“Oh,” said Jun, face already beat red from the attention. Kids he didn’t know were staring at him, watching him, and he started to sweat. Some of them were _girls_ , after all. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

He pulled on his hat, zipped his coat up as high as it would go and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“Thanks, kid,” said the bus driver. “Hey, get home safe, okay?”

For some reason, Jun panicked and saluted him.

Then the bus doors closed and #114 pulled away from the curb.

The sidewalks weren’t in terrible condition. It wasn’t even _that_ cold. (Despite his degree in biology, Mr. Kwon seemed to be an expert on _all_ things scientific and had once explained to Jun how atmospherically unlikely snow actually was. It couldn’t be too hot and it couldn’t be too cold. The conditions had to be perfect. Snow was a fickle beast.)

The problem was the wind.

_Of course it’s the wind, you idiot. You live in Chicago._

It whipped and howled and bit at his cheeks, gusting so powerfully sometimes that Jun thought his skin might actually split and bleed. Was it possible to get cut by a snowflake? Did they have sharp enough edges?

At one point, he stopped walking, shielded his eyes with his ungloved hand and tried to get his bearings. He’d been walking in a straight line, hadn’t he? Shouldn’t he be at his apartment by now?

He’d gotten turned around but the good news was that he knew where he was.

Did he have his keys? He dug into his pocket, fingers trembling, numbing and almost useless, but breathed an audible sigh of relief when he felt the keychain.

Having recently been promoted at the locally-owned and locally-loved Grab-N-Go, Jun had been granted his very own set of keys. No longer was he just a bagboy. Now he was something called a junior-assistant-manager and though he was one-hundred-percent sure that that position didn’t actually exist, he’d hugged Mr. Kobylanski anyway.

Mr. Kobylanski was a burly, expressionless Polish man who didn’t look Polish to Jun. (But, then, what did Jun know about white people? What did he know about ancestry? Did he _look_ Chinese to Mr. Kobylanski?) He owned the Grab-N-Go, a popular but tiny convivence store on a corner in Jun’s neighborhood.

That day, the Grab-N-Go was closed. Jun knew that because Mr. Kobylanski had told him, in heavily-accented English, not to come in. He was going to Reno for three days to see his daughter and didn’t trust any of his employees to take care of the store in his absence. (Jun had feigned offence at the time but he couldn’t help but agree. He was barely a junior-assistant-manager so he definitely wasn’t qualified to run the place alone, and the rest of the staff? They were idiots. One stupider than the next, a never-ending, _Human Centipede_ of idiot-boys.)

But that morning, the Grab-N-Go was needed as a makeshift shelter. Jun knew that the store was closer than his apartment and there was no way he’d make it to his house with his face still intact if the wind held up. He turned the corner that took him to the market, squeezing his key tightly in his right hand.

“Mr. K,” Jun said under his breath, unlocking the door with a shaking hand. “Forgive me.”

It was weird to see the store shut down like this, lights off, empty, but Jun wasted no time. He locked the door, threw his things on the floor and bolted to the thermostat, putting it on 77 before picturing his own death at the hands of Mr. Kobylanski and settled on 70 instead. (He lingered on 69 for a minute and giggled before deciding on 70.)

He checked his phone but to no avail. Hoshi and Minghao were both on their way home and he didn’t have any friends, at least not outside of soccer season. But it didn’t matter anyway because he’d be home soon, party-planning and _maybe_ playing FIFA in his jammies.

He was just waiting for the wind to die down.

But it didn’t.

By lunch time, the wind was as fierce as ever. Jun ducked into the teeny, tiny employee lounge and microwaved himself a Hot Pocket. He washed it down with a Dr. Pepper and a two-pack of Hostess cupcakes, thankful for his metabolism.

By the time the sun went down, the wind seemed _stronger_ and Jun started to worry.

The snow wasn’t stopping and that meant he wasn’t moving.

Could he spend the night at the Grab-N-Go?

He double and triple checked the lock, then went into Mr. Kobylanski’s office. Like the rest of the store, it was small and dinky but Mr. K _did_ keep a cot in there. Sometimes Mr. Kobylanski forgot that Jun annoyed him and spoke to him like a person instead of a grating teenage employee who gave free coffee and doughnuts to girls that smiled at him, and once, he’d spoken about the cot.

“You’ll see when you’re married,” Mr. Kobylanski had said. Jun was proud of his Mr. Kobylanski impression but only Vernon, his dumbest coworker, had ever heard it. (And Vernon was a stoner and an easy laugh so it wasn’t that flattering when he guffawed and fell over.) “Sometimes it’s good to have a second bed. You’ll never know when you’re going to need it.”

“I need it now, Mr. K,” Jun said to no one. “Hope you don’t mind.”

It wasn’t very fancy, just a lumpy mattress on a skimpy metal frame with wheels. Jun wasn’t sure how it even _supported_ Mr. Kobylanski. But he didn’t ask any questions, mostly because there was nobody around to ask. Instead, he rolled it out into the middle of the store, pushed it against the wall where he set up camp, checked the locks one more time and put himself to bed.

With his phone charging, he texted his parents, lying about being home safe, then texted Seungcheol. He’d texted Seungcheol a couple of times, hoping for some news on Jeonghan or just some human contact, but he never heard back. He didn’t hear back from Hoshi or Minghao either, or any of the people he’d sent Snapchats to, and though it had only been a couple of hours, the loneliness was getting to him.

“Don’t freak out, Junhui,” he said. “It’s just a little snow. You’re a big boy. You’re okay.”

Against better judgment, Jun navigated to a news app on his phone and watched some of the videos they’d posted, thinking they would somehow make him feel better.

They didn’t.

There were videos of people mobbing food stores, fighting at gas stations, driving erratically, crashing their cars. He suddenly felt more alone than ever but also strangely like there were hundreds of pairs of eyes on him. He wished he’d had a blanket but it appeared Mr. K didn’t have one. Instead, he bundled up, planned to sleep in his jacket _and_ hoodie, put his gym socks over the ones he was already wearing.

He woke up a little after three-thirty, shaking. He wasn’t sure if he was cold or if he’d had a bad dream, or if that sound he’d heard outside was real.

Maybe he should have gone home with Hoshi. At least he’d be with people.  

He fell asleep again, slept uneasily, dreamt of his mother and of Hoshi and of the girl he’d had a crush on in sixth grade and awoke at first light scolding himself.

“Pull yourself together, Junhui,” he groaned, his voice thick with sleep, his eyes not yet fully open. “You’re safe. You’re fine. You survived the night.” He pumped his fist weakly in the air, angry at himself for having spent the last ten hours so fearful. And for what? He was fine. He was alone. He was warm. He was surrounded by food. He was, all things considered, peaceful. “You did it.”

But his win was short-lived, and so was the peace he felt.

Because suddenly, Jun wasn’t alone.

Suddenly, someone was outside, banging on the twice-locked door of the Grab-N-Go and screaming for help.

It was dawn, the snow hadn’t let up, and someone was begging to be let in.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

  **Hyojin**

* * *

 

It was 8 AM.

The snow hadn’t slowed but Junghwa had stopped answering Hyojin’s text messages.

And Hyojin wasn’t sure which worried her more.

That was a lie. Junghwa worried her more. She was inside, as safe as she could be, no matter how much snow was on the ground. (And by the time she’d woken up that morning, there had to be at least 18 inches.)

Why wasn’t she texting her back?

“She’s probably sleeping,” Hoseok said in his listless, disinterested way. He was leaning against the wall, using one finger to prop open the curtains just enough to peek outside like he didn’t want the snow to know he was watching it. Hyojin didn’t even know she’d been speaking her grievances out loud.

She lived alone – she was used to talking to herself.

“Yeah,” she said, reading and rereading the last six unanswered messages she’d sent. “You’re probably right.”

“Are you friends with anyone in your building?” he asked after a moment of uneasy silence. “Could you text someone and ask them if your street is open yet?”

He’d woken up early and sat on the edge of his mattress until he got up and heard her use the bathroom, pretending that they’d conveniently gotten up at exactly the same time. He didn’t actually care about being rude but he knew Wonwoo would have and so he was trying with all his might to be polite and patient.

But he wanted her out of his house.

He wanted to be alone.

The problem was that Hyojin _wasn’t_ friends with anyone in her building. She wasn’t really friends with anyone outside of work (her best friend, Solji, was the owner of the café where Hyojin was a barista) and one or two girls from school. Who was she supposed to text?

“I could check Twitter or Facebook,” she suggested, hyperaware of how badly Hoseok wanted her to leave. He’d done the gracious, gentlemanly thing and driven her home, then gone above and beyond offering her his couch. But she’d overstayed her welcome and she wanted to leave.

She just had no idea how she was supposed to get home.

Was his Prius capable of driving in this weather? He hadn’t even shoveled out his driveway. Hyojin had suggested it at first light, gone to the door, peeked outside and asked where his shovels were. But Hoseok refused, his words abrupt, his tone harsh. She’d thought it an overreaction but buried the thought in favor of worrying about Junghwa.

Why wasn’t she answering?

Hoseok shifted where he stood, eyes pointed out into the yard.

He was brooding, alright. Hyojin just didn’t know why.

She also didn’t know where Junghwa had gone, why she’d stopped answering in the middle of a conversation, why she’d gone dark when the world had. Was it simply that she’d fallen asleep? For more than half-a-day?

Hyojin slept uneasily, tossing and turning on Hoseok’s couch for something like seven hours and change. She kept the TV on, hoping it would make her feel a little less lonely, let reruns of _Friends_ play while she tried to get comfortable. She grew frustrated, kicked off the blankets, pulled them back on, tried to lay on her stomach, tried to lay on her side, tried to lay on her back, turned the TV off, turned it back on again, got up twice to pee, checked the news, checked the forecast and texted Junghwa.

Now it was morning.

The snow showed absolutely no signs of slowing, absolutely no signs of stopping, and Junghwa showed no signs of texting her back.

And Hyojin didn’t know how she’d get home.

“Take me to my friend’s house,” she blurted suddenly, verbalizing the thought _as_ she had it. She was sure that her expression was one of blank confusion and Hoseok’s was the same.

“Pardon me?”

“My friend Junghwa,” she explained, speaking instead of thinking. “She lives close by. Closer than I do. She lives on a main road so if the plows are out, it should be clear. I’ll just go there and be out of your hair.”

Hoseok blinked.

“Isn’t your friend Junghwa the one that isn’t answering your texts?”

Hyojin bit her lip and said, “Yes.”

“What if she isn’t home? Do you have a key?”

Hyojin hadn’t considered that because Hyojin hadn’t considered anything. Her anxiety and the stress of the situation had caused her to speak her thoughts in real-time.

“No,” she said, “but she’s home. I know she is. She wouldn’t leave. If she’s sleeping, I’ll knock until she wakes up.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Hoseok said.

Hyojin shrugged, listless and out of ideas.

“It’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I’ll give you gas money, okay? Just get me there and I promise I’ll leave you alone until our next bi-sci class. And I’ll owe you notes forever.”

Hoseok waved his hand, dismissive, and shook his head.

“Don’t worry about that, okay? Christ. I’ll go clean off the car.”

“I’ll help you,” she offered enthusiastically but he did the same gesture, the same head shake.

“Stay here,” he said. His tone left no room for debate and so she didn’t offer one. She just nodded once and folded up the blankets he’d given her the night before.

It took him nearly thirty minutes to shovel out the car but he didn’t say a single word about it. He came back inside, his nose and cheeks bright red, stomped his boots on the doormat and told her to wait in the car, that he’d be out in a second. He excused himself to his room, shut the door behind him and Hyojin ignored him in favor of texting Junghwa one more time.

**_I’m coming over. You better be alive or I’ll kill you._ **

Hyojin sat in the car for eight minutes, watching the snow fall against the windshield until Hoseok took his spot in the driver’s seat. Like the day before, he asked the address then put it into his GPS, perfectly content to sit in silence. The car radio played quietly, a lively deejay catching listeners up to speed on the storm.

“Snowpocalypse 2018 rages on,” he said, his voice so animated that it sounded phony. “Twenty inches on the ground today and no signs of stopping. The sky is grey, the wind is biting and the roads are _icy_. Do not, I repeat, do not go out today, people. Stay inside.”

“Too late,” Hoseok murmured.

They drove slowly.

The roads were coated in patches of ice and copious amounts of rock salt. Parked cars were buried in snow. The entire world was white. The streets, Hyojin noticed with an ambiguous knot in her stomach, were completely empty.

Why did that bother her?

She wasn’t used to it. She didn’t live in a small town. There were people everywhere. People, cars, dogs, bird, traffic jams, bicyclists, school buses. Life in the big city was just that – _life._

Empty like this, the world seemed dead.

Hoseok didn’t speak while they drove. His jaw was clenched tightly, tightly enough that Hyojin worried that he might break his teeth.

_Why’s he so angry? What happened to this kid?_

The wind picked up, a powerful gust that blew loose powder in every direction. It reminded Hyojin of something much simpler, something much more innocent, something almost universal. She remembered being a kid at Christmas, staring into a snow globe, wondering what it’d be like to live inside.

Of course, in the mind of a child, it was something peaceful, something that provoked wonderment and warmth and imagination. What could be better than living in a safe, glass bubble that perfectly preserved the spirit of Christmas and family and love?

But that wasn’t real, was it?

They were inside something that day but it wasn’t a snow globe. And the gust of wind, so sudden and so severe, brought forth many emotions but none of them were wonderful or warm.

Hyojin felt uncertainty. Hyojin felt frozen. Hyojin felt fear.

She craned her neck to look at a downed power line, her breath fogging up the glass, and when she used her sleeve to wipe it away, she saw something that surprised her.

“Wait!” she shouted, startling him. “Stop the car!”

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“Stop the car, Hoseok! Jesus.”

“Why?” He still hadn’t stopped. They were fifteen feet from where Hyojin needed to be and without thinking (that seemed to be her move for the day), she unbuckled her seatbelt and went for the door. Hoseok shouted in shock and mild horror. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing? Christ! Hold on! I’ll pull over.”

He hit the brakes hard enough to skid for a few feet but Hyojin was already out the door, hurdling patches of ice and running downwind on a dangerous sidewalk.

The front window of the Grab-N-Go had been smashed and the skinny teenage employee was trying in vain to cover it with a tarp. She recognized him. She didn’t know his name (it was something like Jin or Jim or John) but she knew his face. He gave her free coffee when she smiled at him, his teenage hormones blinding him to the fact that she was the gayest person she knew.

The wind was making it impossible for him to make any progress, the blue fabric of the tarp whipping in all directions and threatening to break free from his grasp.

“Kid!” she shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? Get inside!”

His face was taut, his expression both distressed and confused. He didn’t recognize her, at least not in this context, but he knew that she was an ally and that was enough.

“I can’t!” he screamed back. The wind was brutal, even by Chicago standards. It was strong, loud, threatening any exposed flesh and testing the integrity of every tree, window and street sign in a mile radius. “The window is completely broken! It’s going to destroy the store!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hoseok roared over the wind. He’d backed the Prius up so that it was closer to the Grab-N-Go and was standing on his seat, yelling over the roof of the car.

“People showed up at dawn,” the kid explained. “They broke in and they looted. I can’t believe it. They really _looted_. My God. I’m so screwed. But they destroyed the window and I don’t know how else to fix it! We’re staying inside. We can’t stay here with a broken window. We’ll freeze to death!”

By now, Hoseok had turned off the car and joined them on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, hat pulled down over his ears. He appeared to be listening to the kid’s story but his eyes were elsewhere. It looked like he was scanning their surroundings, maybe waiting for the looters to return, but Hyojin was more concerned about the kid and his store.

She moved closer to the broken window, looking inside the Grab-N-Go. Everything was a mess. The floor was covered in glass and debris, pieces of wood from the pane, crushed packages of food. There was snow everywhere, most of it muddy, most of it flattened by boots and embossed with footprints.

That was when she noticed the girl, young and cute, dressed in an old coat and a yellow winter hat, curled up on a cot towards the back of the store.

Hoseok was standing in the street, spinning slowly, squinting, seemingly unbothered by the unyielding precipitation or the wind that seemed to bellow with the strength and volume of a freight train.

“Let me help you,” Hyojin offered, reaching blindly for the other side of the tarp. It was snowing sideways. Gone were the light, fluffy flakes of the day before. It now felt more like frozen rain, like small, slushy bullets that wanted nothing more than to blind her.

For a moment, she and the kid struggled to try and get the tarp across the window but a second later, and with no warning, Hoseok started screaming.

“Get inside!” he bellowed. The wind roared but Hoseok roared louder. “Now! _Now_! Get inside now _!_ ”

 

* * *

  **Jun**

* * *

 

Jun realized pretty much immediately that he didn’t know her name.

He’d seen her before. He’d definitely given her free coffee and he thought she was very pretty but he didn’t know her name.

He didn’t know his name either. He’d never seen the guy before in his life but Jun had never, ever seen a man go from mildly annoyed to deadly serious so quickly and so he’d done exactly what the guy said.

When he man started screaming, Jun went inside _immediately_.

With extreme haste, Jun and his two nameless saviors worked to get the tarp over the window. She and Jun held it steady while the man, the serious one with no name and no patience, used a nail gun to secure it to the splintered pane.

“That’s not going to hold,” the man said when they were finished. Despite the wind and snow, he was sweating and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, pulling off his hat and shoving it in the pocket of his coat. “We all need to get out here ASAP. _You_.” He pointed to Jun. “Call someone. Call your parents. Have them pick you up.”

“My parents are in China,” Jun explained. “I only have two friends that can drive and neither of them are answering their phones. Why do you think I’m here? I couldn’t get home in the storm. This was the only other place I know.”

“Take a deep breath, kid,” she said calmly. “Start from the beginning. I’m Hyojin and that’s Hoseok. What’s your name?”

Jun inhaled deeply and then said, “I’m Wen Junhui. Everyone calls me Jun. I go to school at Liberty High. They dismissed us early yesterday and my bus dropped me off at the corner. I couldn’t make it home so I spent the night here. I work here.” As if he’d just remembered her presence, Jun pointed to Yuju. “That’s Yuju. She showed up at dawn. When she woke up, her whole school was empty. So she came here. The looters showed up a few hours later. I can’t believe they got in. Mr. Kobylanski is going to kill me.”

“Nobody is going to kill you,” said Hyojin placated.

“My manager is _definitely_ going to kill me,” he said, beginning to pace. His sneakers crunched over broken glass, dead leaves and two crushed bags of Doritos. “I let people in the store. I let them _take things_. Look around! They grabbed everything! They just came in here and took what they wanted!  They said they were coming back. They’re going to take _more._ Oh, God. Oh, he’s going to kill me! Mr. Kobylanski is literally going to kill me. He’s going to–”

“Jun!” Hyojin shouted. She grabbed him by his slender shoulders and shook him. “Snap the fuck out of it! Forget about Mr. Koby-whatever-the-fuck for a second. You’ve got a broken window and looters who want to come back and clean the place out so let’s focus. Is there anyone who can come get you?” Jun thought for a minute, then shook his head. Hyojin nodded once and then looked over his shoulder to the girl on the cot. “What about you? Yuju, right? Do you have anyone to call?”

Yuju pretended to think, pretended to wrack her brain for a friend that lived nearby, someone who could come save her, then looked down at her hands.

“Nobody,” she said. “I’m new in town.” (That was a lie.) “I don’t have anyone.” (That was the truth.)

Hyojin sighed deeply, fighting the urge to groan out loud.

Junghwa was somewhere waiting for her but instead of rushing to her side, she was inside the Grab-N-Go with Jun, the free-coffee kid, and whoever the fuck Yuju was.

And Jun felt every single ounce of tension.

He could feel Hoseok’s anxiety, his anger. He could feel Hyojin’s impatience, her internal conflict. He cold feel _something_ from Yuju but didn’t know what to call it. He could feel everything and it knotted up his stomach, making him feel nauseous and heavy and cemented to the floor.

He was shivering from the cold but trying to make himself stop. He was with two girls, both gorgeous, and an older male who he’d known for three minutes but already feared. He needed to stop shaking. He needed to grow up. He needed to be a man.

_It’s time to be a man, Junhui. It’s time to man the fuck up._

“I could try to walk to my house,” said Jun. “Yuju, you could come if you want. But the wind. And the looters. They said they’d come back. Mr. Kobylanski said he didn’t want anyone here this week but I came anyway. I should have protected the store. Mr. Kobylanski is going to be–”

“Everyone shut the fuck up!” Hoseok snapped. It was so unexpected that Jun actually jumped. He hoped that nobody noticed, that nobody saw him cower, but the girls were looking at Hoseok, eyes wide. “Just shut the fuck up and let me listen.” He’d cracked the front door and stuck his ear out into the world. What he was listening for or what he expected, Jun had no idea but based on the way his face changed, it must have been something bad. “We need to get out of here.”

“But we don’t have anywhere to–”

“Didn’t I just tell you to shut the fuck up?” Jun shrank back, feeling two-inches tall. Hoseok looked to Hyojin, then to Yuju. “I need you both to grab some plastic bags from behind the register. Then I need you to go grab as much food as you can. Non-perishables. Canned goods, granola bars, jerky, shit like that.” Then he looked to Jun. “Do you have first-aid kits? Ibuprofen? Bandages?” Jun nodded once, completely lost. “Fill up a bag with as much as you can carry. And make it fast. We need to go. You can wait at my house until your friends answer their goddamned phones but you’re not staying with me, you understand? Just grab some food and get in the car. As fast as you can. Go!”

Hyojin and Yuju didn’t miss a beat. In an instant, they were grabbing bags. Seconds later, they were shoveling armfuls of food inside.

Jun’s mouth went dry.

“You can do that,” he stammered. “Mr. Kobylanski will kill us all. We can’t just rob his store. This is his livelihood! We’re stealing! We can’t do that! What about Mr. Kobylanski? Do you know what he’s going to do to me when he comes back to see a broken window and all his food gone? Mr. Kobylanski–”

Hoseok roared. It was wordless and full of fury.

“If you say the word _Kobylanski_ one more fucking time, kid, I’m going to slap the shit out of you. Get a fucking bag and fill it with bandages and rubbing alcohol or, I swear to God, I’m going to rip you in half!”

In response to this, even the wind seemed to quiet down.

Jun swallowed hard, his face beat-red. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes but he grabbed a bag and staggered to the back of the store before anyone could see them fall. He grabbed what he could – overpriced allergy medication, Tylenol, peroxide, butterfly bandages, antacids – and lugged it all back to the front door. He grabbed his phone charger and his duffle bag from the cot, moving as quickly as he could. The girls had filled six bags and Hoseok helped carry everything to the car.

Jun was genuinely surprised by the amount of snow that already accumulated on the Prius.

How long had they been in the store?

Quickly, they loaded the car, then piled in. Jun sat in the back with Yuju, neither willing to say another word to Hoseok. He seemed borderline rabid but he had a car full of food and a safe place to wait out the storm so there wasn’t much they _could_ say.

“Call your friends,” Hoseok said as he started the car. “Right now. I mean it. I’m not running a goddamned youth hostel. You can stay until they pick you up. You’re not staying over.”

“You said that already,” Jun whispered. If Hoseok heard him, he didn’t reply.

“Hoseok,” Hyojin said softly. “We were supposed to be going to Junghwa, remember? I have to make sure she’s okay.”

Jun didn’t know who that was, didn’t know what that meant, but he _did_ see the way Hoseok’s jaw clenched.

“You shut the fuck up, too,” he said.

Then he buckled his seatbelt, turned on the windshield wipers and drove away.

 

* * *

  **Yuju**

* * *

 

Yuju had to give herself credit where it was due.

Playing the damsel in distress had gotten her into a warm house with three people and plenty of food.

To be completely fair, it wasn’t really a con. She _was_ a damsel and she _was_ in distress when she’d knocked on the door of the Grab-N-Go. (Perhaps _knocked_ was the wrong word. She’d been pretty forceful. She didn’t really think to stick out the lower lip and flash her big doe eyes until she saw it was Jun who opened the door. She hadn’t known his name at the time, of course, but that was neither here nor there.)

It wasn’t a con because it was the truth.

She’d needed help and so she’d asked for it. What was wrong with that? How was that a con? Sure, she’d dressed it up a little, acted more helpless than she felt, threw in a couple of extra shivers. But that was all just to make Jun feel like a big, strong rescuer.

That was important for boys’ egos.

That was why she did it.

That was why she always did it.

Besides, Yuju came from con artists. This wasn’t a con. Not by a long shot.

She hadn’t expected the looters. Jun hadn’t either. The poor kid nearly shit his pants when they broke the window. Shaking like a leaf, he’d put his body between Yuju and the window, a half-assed attempt at keeping her safe. He’s clenched his fists and everything, trying to look tough despite his size and obvious terror.

But he was out-numbed four-to-one and if these guys, armed with shovels and crowbars, were desperate enough to break in and steal hot pickles, Gatorade and stale muffins, they weren’t the kind of guys he wanted to tangle with anyway. Yuju suspected drugs were involved, probably meth from the look of their teeth, and so when Jun stepped forward heroically, looking like he might try to start swinging, Yuju grabbed his wrist.

“Absolutely nothing in this store is worth dying for,” she’d told him sternly.

“Listen to your girlfriend,” one of the men cackled.

They’d left with enough food to last them a while but on their way out (they used the broken window instead of the door, something else that Yuju thought pointed to drugs), the skinniest and arguably most terrifying of the group promised they’d be back.

Jun had been lightning-quick with the tarp. He didn’t strike her as the sharpest tool in the shed but as soon as the hungry meth heads had disappeared into the storm, Jun made a beeline for a back office. Initially, Yuju wasn’t sure if he was going to panic-puke in private or if he would reappear with a shotgun and run after them.

When he came back holding a tarp and a nail gun, she was both pleasantly surprised and mildly impressed.

Maybe they’d have a snowball’s chance in hell after all.

But the wind was relentless and it threatened to rip the tarp right from Jun’s hands and drag it up to the heavens, leaving them completely exposed, both to the wrath of Mother Nature _and_ the wrath of any future looters.

It wasn’t like a blue piece of canvas was going to do much to stop either but it was a start. She’d rather have a tarp than no tarp so she was rooting for Jun to make it happen.

She couldn’t get off the cot, though. She couldn’t prove herself to be too useful. If she was working the damsel-in-distress-who-needs-a-place-to-stay angle, she had to be weak. It pained her to even _pretend_ that she needed a man to take care of her (even if this particular man was more of a boy) but if it meant she’d be warm, it’s what she’d do.

The longer Jun struggled, though, the more she realized she might _have_ to spring into action or neither of them would be very warm for much longer.

Luckily for everyone, it was then that two mysterious strangers showed up.

The woman, blonde, very pretty, a little older than Yuju, jumped right into help. The man, handsome but short-tempered (wasn’t that always the case?), was less willing to play the part of the Good Samaritan.

Yuju watched the man, Hoseok, while Jun spoke to the woman. Her name was Hyojin and Yuju figured out right away that they knew each other. Apparently, she wasn’t the only pretty girl he plied with free food. She could hardly be offended by that. She used her charm to get what she wanted and this kid was using doughnuts to do the same. (There was something endearing about the fact that Jun thought he could use convenience store baked goods to get attractive older women to sleep with him but didn’t all high school boys think they had an _in_? Hell, college boys did, too. She had an entire _legion_ of men willing to do her bidding. Didn’t every one of them think that they had a chance at getting into her pants because they brought her psychology notes and dumplings?)

Because Yuju was watching Hoseok rather than focusing on the window or the snow or the conversation between Hyojin and Jun, she noticed what they didn’t. He had been staring into the street, then into the sky, then into the alley between the Grab-N-Go and whatever was next door.

She saw it. She didn’t see what _he_ saw, didn’t hear what _he_ heard, hadn’t the slightest comprehension of what it was he knew that they didn’t, but she saw it. She saw the way his face changed, the way his posture changed. It was clear that he’d been annoyed by the stop, probably forced by his girlfriend (Yuju just assumed that they were together) to pull over and help, but in an instant, his irritation became bone-deep fear. But just as quickly, the fear was gone and replaced with an enraged panic.

They’d patched up the window, then Hoseok bossed them around for a bit, scolded Jun, ordered them to fill their pockets with the food that the meth heads didn’t want, then hit the road.

Now they were safely inside of Hoseok’s house, sandwiched into a small but blissfully warm living room, and Yuju reconsidered her original assumption.

With the way his house was decorated (or, rather, not decorated in any way, shape or form), Hoseok had to be single.

The TV was on, The Weather Channel playing forecasts on a loop, but no one was watching it. Jun and Hyojin were walking aimlessly around the room, repeatedly hitting _redial_ on their phones, presumably trying to get ahold of their loved ones.

There was something sad about that, something that brought Yuju’s spirits down. It wasn’t empathy – she didn’t especially care that these strangers couldn’t reach their friends and family. But it occurred to her, sitting in the house of yet another stranger, that she had no one to call.

Maybe she could send Jihyo a text, pretending she gave a damn about her sometimes-roommate and her sometimes-roommate’s boyfriend. Maybe she could text Eunha, a girl she’d worked with once on a group project. Maybe she could text her parents, but that seemed even more unreasonable a suggestion than the others.

Yuju had no one to text. She had no one to call. She had no one to worry about. And there was no one out there worrying about her.

The realization, however familiar, sank like a rock in her stomach.

Because she had nothing else to do with her hands, Yuju reached for the remote, flipping from the weather to the news. People were being asked to stay inside, a state of emergency having been declared by the governor the night before. It had been snowing for thirty-hours straight but the real threat seemed to be the wind and ice.

The banner on-screen cited sixteen car accidents since the snow began. From that, there had been a reported twelve injuries and three deaths. Looting was taking place all across the state, everything from mini-marts to department stores. People were reporting sporadic cell service, impassable roadways and bare shelves at grocery stores.

It had only been snowing for two days and yet panic had set in, giving way to chaos and putting all of Illinois in grave danger.

Hoseok had excused himself to his bedroom the moment they walked in the door. Fifteen minutes had passed and he didn’t emerge so Yuju asked Hoseok where the bathroom was. She had no intention of checking on him because, at best, he seemed slightly imbalanced but she _was_ curious what he was doing in his room.

Based on the shadow she saw beneath the door, he was pacing.

She went into the bathroom, counted to fifteen, then flushed the toilet and washed her hands.

When she returned, she noticed that Hyojin had put her phone on the coffee table. Jun was still trying, redialing and redialing in spite of the fact that nobody appeared to be picking up, sitting on the floor because he’d grown tired of standing. She locked eyes with Hyojin, then nodded her chin at the kitchen.

Did girl-code only apply to bar bathrooms, or did the social custom carry over to stranger’s kitchens?

Without a word, Hyojin nodded and followed Yuju into the other room and as soon as they were out of earshot, she asked, very quietly, “Are we safe here?”

“What do you mean?”

Yuju peaked around the corner, looking to Hoseok’s room.

“This Hoseok guy,” she went on. “Is he your boyfriend?” Hyojin made a face like Yuju had just spoken Klingon, so Yuju waved her hands dismissively. “Forget it. Are we _safe_ here? Me, you and Jun? Hoseok seems unpredictable, maybe even a little unhinged. How well do you know him?”

Hyojin shrugged.

“Not very well,” she admitted. “We’re in the same science class. He tried to give me a ride home yesterday but we ended up stranded here. Look, I know he seems a little weird but I think he’s just tense because of the storm. We all are.”

Yuju bit her lip.

Hyojin hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t seen Hoseok’s face. Hadn’t seen the paralyzing fear or how fast that fear had become frenzied panic. There was something else going on, something more than just the snow, and whatever it was, Hoseok knew something about it.

That was why he’d sequestered himself.

That was why he was pacing.

That was why he’d gotten so scared outside the Grab-N-Go.

He knew something they didn’t which meant, as safe and as warm as they felt inside his house, they were at-risk.

And Yuju didn’t know how to feel about that.

The girls returned to the living room just as the news story changed over to a press conference. A police officer with rosy cheeks and a bushy, greying beard was standing at a podium, looking solemn.

“Turn it up,” Hyojin said.

“…and now that we’ve been able to identify the dead and inform their families, we’re going to be releasing their names to the public. So, uh, that would be Kang Seulgi, Kwon Yuri and Yoon Jeonghan. Again, for the press, the three killed in last night’s car accidents have been identified as Kang Seulgi, Kwon Yuri and Yoon Jeonghan, all Chicago residents.”

From the floor, Jun cried out. It was more of a whimper than anything. It seemed involuntary, a completely biological reaction, and then he hung his head.

He’d known someone on that list. Someone he knew had died and this was how he’d found out.

Was it the person he’d been trying to call? Was it a relative? A friend from school? Another girl he’d given doughnuts to?

Yuju couldn’t bring herself to ask.

Jun hugged his legs to his chest and started to cry. Hyojin and Yuju locked eyes, both unsure about how to proceed, then Hyojin said quietly, “I’m going to put the food away.”

They’d left the bags from the Grab-N-Go on the table. She and Hyojin had grabbed as much as they could and Yuju had tried to take food that could be eaten cold – canned ravioli, corned beef hash, baked beans, chicken noodle soup, sliced peaches, Spaghettios. Hyojin had gone for things that could be easily transported – beef jerky, granola bars, nuts, energy drinks.

They hadn’t coordinated it in the moment but it had worked out nicely.

It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to put the food away – if they had to leave Hoseok’s house, they’d just have to pack everything back up – but Hyojin just wanted to get out of the room.

Yuju didn’t blame her.

Was she supposed to comfort Jun? Sit beside him and pat his shoulder? Clutch him to her bosom? Would that make him feel better or worse? Teenage boys were fickle, complicated beings. They didn’t even understand their own emotions. How was she supposed to?

She didn’t know what to say to him.

Besides, there was another emotion just beneath her uncertainty.

As sick as it was, Yuju felt _envy_.

There was a small but palpable pang of jealousy stuck between two of her ribs. She knew it didn’t make sense. She knew it was twisted and dark. But she couldn’t help the thought that crossed her mind as she watched the boy on the floor sob and shake.

_At least Jun has someone to mourn._

Hoseok picked that moment to return.

Somehow, he looked surprised.

Had he expected them to leave? Had he been anticipating an empty living room?

“The snow isn’t letting up,” Hyojin said preemptively. She must have sensed his irritation, making Yuju wonder again if their relationship was more significant than she’d let on. There seemed to be a weird bond there, a connection that went beyond simply being classmates. “Three people are dead and no one is answering their phone. I hate to say it, Hoseok, but I think we’re stuck here.”

Yuju watched him like a hawk.

Hoseok was careful not to let any of his true thoughts and feelings slip out of his mouth but his body betrayed him. His fingers twitched at his sides, his jaw clenched tight like a vise. He bit the inside of his cheek, cocked his head to one side and exhaled roughly through his nose.

He was agitated. Agitated by their presence, by the snow, by whatever he’d seen in the storm, even by Jun’s crying. But something was keeping him from exploding. Something, some invisible force or maybe some deity to which Hoseok was fiercely devoted, was keeping him from unleashing all of that worry and anger and fear.

She watched him shake it off, watched him swallow it whole and use every ounce of strength he could muster to stay standing and stay calm.

Yuju had only known him an hour but she found herself already wondering how much longer he’d be able to keep it together. How long until he blew up? How long until he showed them his true colors? How long until he told them what it was he knew?

How long until he became a threat to them?

When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth.

“There’s enough room for everyone to spend the night,” he said. He looked around the room, to Hyojin then to Jun, then to Yuju. “But you all need to be out of here by morning.”

 

* * *

  **Hoseok**

* * *

 

He didn’t start to lose his shit until everyone was asleep.

Hyojin was on the couch again, Yuju in the barely-furnished guest room and Jun on the living room floor.

He felt it in his chest, the panic.

It was tighter than he remembered. It felt almost muscular, like his tendons and ligaments were twisting and contracting before seizing and turning to stone. It was getting harder to breathe, making Hoseok genuinely wonder if he was having a panic attack or a heart attack.

_Calm down. Calm down. Calm the ever-loving fuck down._

He tried to breathe deeply but found that the oxygen in his room seemed to be incompatible with his lungs. His room was dark but he could see just fine. Against his better judgment, he’d pulled open his curtains. Though his back was to the window, and though the moon was completely covered by clouds, the orange glow of the sky gave him just enough light by which to see.

But what did he need to see?

_It’s not happening again, Hoseok. It’s not possible. What would the odds be? It’s too unlikely to even calculate. It’s not happening again. It can’t. It just can’t._

But three people were already dead.

He looked at the clock on his nightstand. The glowing blue numbers informed him that it was after midnight, meaning that they were entering into day three of the storm.

_Don’t kid yourself. You know what they say about denial. Face it. More people are going to die and there’s nothing you can do. Nothing at all._

But what was his obligation anyway? Who was going to force his hand? Hyojin? Wonwoo? God?

There was nothing he could do. He was one man and he was armed with nothing. Nothing but slightly more knowledge than the average person. One man wasn’t meant to save the entire state from catastrophe.

One man couldn’t save the world.

_Especially when you couldn’t even save Jimin._

But Jimin had gone out into the storm despite ample warning from everyone around him.

One man couldn’t save the world.

_Especially when you couldn’t save Wonwoo._

But Wonwoo wasn’t dead!

They were twins. If Wonwoo was dead, he’d feel it. He’d _know_. Wonwoo was alive.

He was gone, but he was alive.

Hoseok had started to sweat.

He was in his t-shirt and boxers, sitting on the edge of his bed, hands on his knees. The wind rattled his house and phantom chills shot through his bones but he was sweating. His hair stuck to his forehead. His shirt clung to his back. His stomach twisted and turned, his face turning green from all the churning.

Through the dark, he stared at his closet door.

How could this be happening to him again? How was he supposed to survive it a second time?

_You shouldn’t have survived it the first time._

_It should have been you. It should have been you. It should have been you._

He had a house full of strangers and they were all depending on him. How had that happened? All he’d done was offer Hyojin a ride home. How did he end up here? He knew better than to try and help people. He knew better than to be so selfless. He knew better than to be so kind.

Did he have a death wish?

_Yes. A million times, yes._

How was he supposed to survive this all again when he’d barely survived it four years ago? What did he have now that he didn’t have then? Some more information, maybe. Some context. But it was easier to count what he’d lost since then.

_A best friend. A twin brother. A girl he loved. A reason to get out of his fucking bed in the morning._

He’d gained three dependents. A girl from bi-sci, a teenager from the Grab-N-Go and a co-ed with nothing to offer him. They slept in his house, completely oblivious to what was coming, blissfully ignorant to all of things he knew to be true.

They didn’t know.

He wished he didn’t know.

For a minute, he’d been so sure. It wasn’t happening again. It was just some snow.

But then, he’d heard it. Right there outside the Grab-N-Go, he’d heard it.

Clear as day. Loud and clear. Everything was clear but his head.

He looked at his closet again. Was it calling to him? Or was he hearing things?

_You know the answer to that_.

He just didn’t understand. He couldn’t make sense of it. His heart raced, his head spun, his chest tightened, his stomach lurched but his brain couldn’t parse any of it. How could this be happening again? Four years and ten-thousand miles later, how could this be happening again?

Two storms.

He knew it so well.

Not just one storm but two.

One would kill and the other would simply _take_.

Hoseok knew. He knew it all already. He’d seen it before all over the world, once firsthand.

But how was he supposed to take care of two-and-a-half strangers when he hadn’t even been able to take care of his brother and best friend? How was he supposed to tell Hyojin that the friend she’d been calling was almost definitely dead already? How was he supposed to tell Yuju and Jun that, based on the numbers, there was a very good chance that they wouldn’t survive the next few days?

How was he supposed to do any of it with just a few convenience store bags full of microwave pasta and sports drinks?

How was he supposed to save them?

How was he supposed to save _himself_?

How could this be happening again?

How could it be happening in Chicago?

Hoseok swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. His throat, too. He was burning up, briefly considered taking off his shirt and running into the snow.

_You really do have a death wish, huh?_

He wished it would stop. He wished it was all one big coincidence. He wished that it was just some snow, just a blizzard, just a winter storm causing people to act recklessly and get themselves killed.

But he’d heard it.

_Laughter_.

He’d heard it but he wished he hadn’t.

_Wishing, wishing, wishing. Wishful thinking._

More than anything, he wished he could ask his brother for advice.

Wonwoo always knew the answer. He always knew what to do. He was one of those guys, the ones whose brains seemed to be overflowing with knowledge. He really did know everything.

_Yet you don’t even know where he is. Your own twin brother. What do you know, Hoseok?_

Hoseok glanced over his shoulder. He felt like he was being watched but there was no one there. No one outside. No one he could see anyway. No one he could hear.

They always got quiet at night.

The wind blew harder.

Hoseok stood up.

It was 2:34 AM.

Officially, it had been snowing for forty-eight hours.

No sign of stopping. Hoseok knew that.

_Nothing you can do now but wait._

_Nothing you can do now but pray._

And so, as the snow continued to fall, as they all unwittingly entered into day three of the first storm, Hoseok walked to his closet, opened the door and stepped inside.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

**Hyojin**

* * *

 

The ramen finished cooking at exactly 9:13 AM.

It wasn’t much of a balanced breakfast – four cups of instant noodles and four fried eggs – but it was hot, hot enough, Hyojin hoped, to help raise everyone’s spirits.

She’d glanced nervously out the window as the hot water softened the noodles, remembering the bright light that lit the world two nights before. Looking out into the morning, expecting the sun and finding only darkness, Hyojin felt that same bone-deep, unfamiliar dread.

When she wanted darkness, she got a bright, white light.

When she wanted sunshine, she got thick, all-consuming clouds.

Talk about bad luck.

Jun and Yuju were already awake and Hyojin had a feeling that they’d slept as poorly as she did. Even if they’d _wanted_ to sleep in, it was impossible. Without the luxury of sunshine, it was hard to tell the day from night. She’d tossed and turned, then given up a little after 7:30. She’d stepped carefully over a sleeping Jun (who seemed to be dreaming), used the bathroom, put her ear to Hoseok’s door to see if he was awake, then sat in the kitchen, sending unanswered text message after unanswered text message to Junghwa until Yuju got up and sat with her.

Now, Yuju was on the couch, watching the news, soaking up all of the information she could despite the fact that every reporter and every weatherman on every channel had been saying the exact same thing for the last twelve hours. Jun was sitting on the floor, right in the center of his makeshift bed, redialing his friend’s number.

His eyes were swollen from crying.

Because he’d slept just eight feet away from the couch, Hyojin knew he’d been crying in his sleep but she still had no idea what to say to him. Until helping him patch up the Grab-N-Go, the extent of their relationship had been him flirting and her accepting free, slightly stale powdered doughnuts. She had no idea who it was he’d lost. (Since that newsbreak, it was reported that forty-six more people had died. Hyojin had no idea how to wrap her head around that figure and so she didn’t. Instead, she’d marched into the kitchen and made them all cup noodles and fried eggs. And she didn’t feel that bad about taking Hoseok’s ramen without asking. He had a whole closet full. Besides, if things got really weird and they had to leave, it wasn’t the kind of thing they could take with them anyway.)

Her heart broke for Jun in spite of the glaring distance between them. He was just a kid. She’d managed to pry a couple of sentences out of him, a few tidbits, a tiny glimpse into who he was as a person. But so far, all she knew was that he was a senior at Liberty High, he played soccer and his parents were in China.

And that someone he cared about died.

Someone he cared enough about to cry over in front of two pretty girls in the living room of a stranger.

That was why Hyojin had given him the biggest fried egg.

It wasn’t exactly a condolence card or a big hug but teen boys needed protein, right?

She brought his ramen right to him, handing him the cup and a pair of chopsticks. He looked up from his phone, nodded his head in gratitude and accepted it, diving right in before she could warn him about how hot it was.

“Jun,” said Yuju softly, scooching to the edge of the couch cushion. “Were you able to reach your parents?”

He shook his head, inhaling every noodle like he hadn’t eaten in days. Hyojin didn’t know it but the last thing Jun had eaten was a microwaved hotdog his first night in the Grab-N-Go. His stomach felt as empty as his heart but he hadn’t wanted to admit it, hadn’t wanted to ask for a snack.

“No,” he said. “The calls aren’t going through. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like they can help me. They’re all the way in China. What if it’s snowing just as hard there?”

Hyojin bit the inside of her cheek. They’d only been checking local stations. Was it possible that this snow was somehow a global event? Were all cold-climate areas being pounded with dozens of inches of snow and buried under sheets of ice? Was that even possible? Was this the devastating reality of climate change? Why hadn’t they listened to Al Gore when they’d had the chance?

Yuju nodded slowly. Like Hyojin, she didn’t know what the fuck to say. What was the social custom when you were trapped in a house with strangers and one of their friends had died? This was, to Hyojin’s knowledge, and unprecedented situation and so there was no script in place. How were they supposed to make Jun feel better?

Hyojin ducked into the kitchen and returned with Yuju’s food. She bowed her head, muttered her quiet thanks, then directed her attention to the TV. Of the four of them, she was by far the most invested in the 24-hour news. After the first hour or so, Hyojin had figured out that nobody had anything new to add, that everyone was repeating the same four empty promises, the same two vague warnings and a sprinkling of buzzwords to keep things interesting, and tuned out.

Nobody had any idea what was going on, meaning that the second-rate newscasters and meteorologists on channel six didn’t know any more than they did. Why watch them flounder? (Hyojin figured it made Yuju feel less alone. She’d had a lot of free time in the last twenty-four hours and she’d used it to observe and psychoanalyze her two temporary roommates. Yuju seemed to struggle with loneliness the way Jun with his budding masculinity.)

And perhaps there was something mildly comforting (albeit more-than-mildly grating) about the constant buzz of news and weather. It was a tether, something that connected them to the outside world. Sequestered like this, the four of them, Hyojin could feel it. It had only been two days but the difference was almost tangible. It wasn’t just Junghwa who’d stopped texting back – every message she’d sent since the night before had gone unanswered. She hadn’t seen anyone beside Hoseok, Yuju and Jun since class on Friday morning. She had no idea what was going outside the four walls that surrounded her and it was unsettling to feel so cut off.

Was anyone even still out there? What if everyone else had vanished? What if they’d been swept up into the sky, pulled from the earth by the strong winds and thrown to a whole new world?

Knowing that she was getting too existential and perhaps just a little bit dramatic, Hyojin returned to the kitchen to take a bite of her own food. Hoseok’s was on the table, threatening to get cold and soggy before he’d even touched it.

What was he doing in there? Why did he spend so much time alone in his room? Was it simply a case of boredom and social anxiety? He didn’t want to talk to them so he shut himself in his bedroom and played Overwatch? Or was it something more serious?

“Jesus!” yelled Yuju from the living room. Swallowing a piece of egg that she hadn’t finished chewing, Hyojin bolted from the kitchen, nearly tripping over Jun in the process. She opened her mouth to speak but instead followed Yuju’s wide eyes to the television.

Onscreen, a new figure had been posted. It was displayed on a bright red banner beneath a sheet-white anchorwoman with trembling hands.

**_345 confirmed deaths in Chicago area – number rising as temperatures continue to drop._ **

“What the fuck is going on?” Jun asked, voice shaking.

“Turn it up,” Hyojin directed.

“With 345 reported deaths so far,” the anchorwoman said slowly, “this is already the deadliest blizzard in United States history since the Great Blizzard in 1888. Snow continues to fall all across the state with some areas reporting as much as five-feet.” It was hard to miss the way she stammered, how unprofessional she came across. There was panic in her eyes, uncertainty in every word. But she had a job to do and so she did it. “Please do not go outside in this. Many of these deaths are from car accidents. Some heart attacks from shoveling. Some are simply exposure. Just stay inside. It can’t snow forever, right?” She laughed nervously, fidgeted with the loose papers on her desk and glanced off-camera. “Sh-should we check in with Brian? Get an update on the how the stormfront is moving?”

But Hyojin knew Brian would have nothing to add because this wasn’t a stormfront. She didn’t know what it was but she knew it was way outside the realm of normal.

“What the fuck _is_ going on?” Yuju repeated, almost whispering.

“Okay,” said Hyojin, exhaling roughly. She needed to make an executive decision. “Turn off the TV. We need a break. I’m going to get Hoseok and we’re going to eat our breakfast at the kitchen table like humans. There’s nothing we can do but wait and try to stay warm. I’ll make more eggs.”

“I’ll make tea,” Yuju said after a beat. She clicked off the TV, picked up her cup of noodles and gestured for Jun to follow her. He hesitated for a moment but then sprang up and stumbled into the kitchen, spilling a few drops of pork broth onto the carpet.

Hyojin stood in the dark hallway for a minute, trying to shake the anxiety out of her arms and legs. Maybe she was the voice of reason within her group but that didn’t mean the voice inside her own head was very reasonable.

What if Junghwa was dead? What if she’d wasted two years beating around the bush and pining for the girl of her dreams? What if she’d missed her chance to ever tell Junghwa how she felt? What if she could have saved her? What if she’d made the wrong call on Friday? What if she should have found a way to Junghwa’s instead of going home with Hoseok? What if the girl she loved was dead? And what if it was all her fault?

With a shaking hand, she knocked on Hoseok’s door.

“Hoseok?” she called quietly. The house was silent. If he was inside, he could hear her. “Hoseok, I made breakfast. Come eat with us. I think we all need a dose of normalcy today. Let’s pretend we’re all friends and eat together.” No response. She knocked again. “Hoseok?” She pushed gently on the door and it opened, finding that it hadn’t been shut all the way. “You in here?”

His bedroom was just as nondescript as the rest of his house. The walls were light grey, the trim a few shades darker. His bed was made, covered with a dark blue comforter. He had two nightstands, one topped with an alarm clock and the other with a small stack of textbooks. There was a hamper near his closet, a few accessories atop a plain-looking dresser. He had a desk against one wall and his laptop sat, closed and unplugged, beside a small lamp.

It was, perhaps, the most boring room Hyojin had ever seen.

There wasn’t a single item out of place. There were no dirty socks on the floor, no creases in the pillowcases. There were no photos or posters on the wall, no magazines on the nightstand, no trinkets, no plants, no personal effects of any kind.

Who was this kid?

Didn’t he have family? Friends? Interests? Likes? Dislikes? _Anything_?

She was about to leave, about to turn back for the kitchen with the slightly uncomfortable knowledge that Hoseok might be an alien trying and failing to blend in with humans, when she saw that his closet door was slightly ajar.

She wasn’t sure why it intrigued her.

Part of her wanted to find something to prove that Hoseok was a normal, human boy. She wanted to peruse his wardrobe and come across something that made him more relatable, more approachable. Maybe it’d be a jersey from his favorite basketball team or his high school varsity jacket or an oversized t-shirt with a 90s cartoon character on the front or a pair of sneakers he’d saved up all his money to buy.

 _Something_ that broke down this weird barrier separating Hoseok from the rest of the group.

But another part of her, a much smaller but much wiser part, told her that she _needed_ to open the door and so that was exactly what she did.

But she didn’t find a Reptar t-shirt and she didn’t find an expensive pair of Jordan’s.

No, what Hyojin found inside her classmate’s closet was far more shocking, far more confusing and far more elaborate than any pair of sneakers that had ever existed.

It was one-part shine, two-parts working laboratory.

At first, she had absolutely no idea what she was looking at.

It was a decent-sized closet, a walk-in that was probably best described as its own tiny room, especially since the shelves had been removed. A chain hung from the ceiling, connected to a lightbulb, and Hyojin pulled it, wincing at the sudden light.

But once her eyes adjusted, she gasped.

What the fuck was she looking at?

One wall was entirely covered in pictures. Hoseok was in a good number of them but the main focus seemed to be two young men Hyojin had never seen before.

They were both brunettes. One had bangs, chubby cheeks, and a smile that seemed to make his eyes disappear. He was laughing in most of the photos. The other was tall and skinny with narrow eyes and perfect teeth. There was only one photo of the two men together. The rest were individual shots or pictures of them with Hoseok. He seemed friendly with both of them, throwing up peace signs and hand hearts or wrapping their arms around each other’s shoulders. Some of the photos, the Polaroids, were dated with black marker.

None of them were dated past 2014.

Two walls were covered entirely with what looked like research. Maps of towns Hyojin had never heard of, print-outs of chatrooms and forums, long lists of numbers, newspaper articles, weather reports, satellite images of stormfronts and measurements of precipitation, handwritten notes with poor, rushed penmanship and various words scribbled out in ink.

She leaned closer.

Everything was about blizzards.

The last wall, the one directly behind Hyojin, was wallpapered with missing persons reports and subsequent fliers. There were hundreds. Right in the center was the boy with narrow eyes and perfect teeth. His flier wasn’t the only one written in Korean and Hyojin was suddenly thankful that her parents had forced her to learn the language as a kid.

She stepped closer, squinting to see more clearly.

**_MISSING_ **

_Have you seen this man?_

_Name: Jeon Wonwoo_

_Age: 20_

_Eyes: Brown_

_Hair: Brown_

_Height: 6’0_

_Weight: 145lbs_

_20-year-old student, Jeon Wonwoo, was last seen in Yojeong Village on 1/31/14 during heavy snowfall wearing black thermal pants, a navy-blue robe and red snow boots. Offering $5,000 for any information leading to his safe return. Please contact Hoseok, Eunhee or local law enforcement.  
_

Hyojin swallowed hard.

What the fuck had she just walked into?

She moved closer to get a better look but her foot clipped the side of a cardboard box. Glancing down, Hyojin saw that it was filled with random items. There was a comic book, a pair of plastic binoculars, two bright green walkie-talkies, a half-empty bottle of cologne, a red snapback, a Nirvana t-shirt, a tattered composition book and what appeared to be the tie to a navy-blue bathrobe.

Her head spinning, Hyojin moved quickly to exit the closet, backing out the door to take one last look around.

_Maybe he isn’t the most boring man on the planet after all._

But in her hasty haze, she backed right into Hoseok.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” His words were harsh but his tone was flat. He was surprised, flustered, maybe even a little bit scared. He hadn’t expected to see her and that had taken the wind out of his sails. “What are you _doing_ in here?”

Hyojin looked him in the eye and saw it – _vulnerability_.

Her expression was blank, her tone completely even.

She pointed inside the closet, gesturing emptily to everything she’d just seen.

Though she hadn’t meant to, she had just stumbled upon a very big, very dangerous secret, and even if she didn’t know what it was, she knew that she needed the details.

From the look in his eye, Hoseok knew it, too.

“You,” she said softly enough so that Yuju and Jun didn’t overhear but sternly enough that Hoseok didn’t misunderstand, “have got some serious explaining to do.”  
  


* * *

**Jun  
**

* * *

  
Jun didn’t know why breakfast was so awkward.

Though his eyes were pointed into his cup of noodles, Hyojin glared at Hoseok while they ate.

Yuju made everyone tea and Hyojin had silently cooked up another batch of eggs, giving two to Jun and (since Jun had downed the entirety of his ramen before she’d even gotten back into the kitchen) and none to Hoseok.

Was this that sexual tension thing he’d heard so much about on TV?

What exactly _was_ Hyojin’s relationship to Hoseok? She was too pretty for him, too brooding. From the way he snapped at Jun, the way he spoke to the girls, Jun thought the guy was a grade-A dick, something he had to keep to himself since this grade-A dick was letting them stay in house. But was it true what his friends always bitched about? Did the hot girls always settle for jerks instead of dating nice guys like Jun?

It wasn’t like Jun thought he had a shot with Hyojin. He didn’t seriously think he had a shot with _any_ of the girls he gave free doughnuts to (and there were seven of them) but he still didn’t like the idea of a girl like Hyojin going home with a guy like Hoseok.

And if that _wasn’t_ the case, if the root of their tension _wasn’t_ sexual, what the hell was their problem?

Now that Jun had finished his eggs, he was nursing a chipped mug full of black tea. There wasn’t enough sugar in it, something he wasn’t willing to admit to the older, cooler strangers sitting with him, so he drained the cup with small sips, his fingers repeatedly locking and unlocking his phone.

He’d called Seungcheol 57 times and still hadn’t heard a single word back.

The calls had started going to voicemail after call #13, meaning that either Seungcheol’s phone had died or he’d manually turned it off. That or he’d given up and blocked Jun.

_Lucky #13._

Jun’s soccer number and a short-lived nickname within the team.

He wasn’t feeling so lucky that morning, though he realized maybe he should have. He was warm. He had a belly full of food. He was sitting beside two beautiful women and one grade-A dick and he was inside, safe from harm.

That was more than most could say, wasn’t it?

345 people had died in the storm so far. Could that be right? That was more people than he knew personally. It was a number he couldn’t conceptualize in any practical way. That was nearly his entire senior class. He tried to imagine the death of every single person he knew, of every single kid in his grade, just so he could bring some meaning to that number, but it was useless.

A seventeen-year-old kid was still very much a kid and kids weren’t meant to understand death on such an acute and devastating scale.

That was what Jun told himself as he took another sip of tea.

It was dead silent in the kitchen, no TV playing from the living room and no conversation happening across the table, yet Jun was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear his phone vibrate.

“Hey, kid,” said Yuju. “Your phone is ringing.”

Jun’s heart dropped. He snatched his phone off the table and sprinted into the privacy of the living room, answering it without bothering to see who was calling him.

“Seungcheol?” he demanded, already out of breath.

“Guess again!” said Hoshi.

Jun’s heart dropped further.

“Oh,” he said, flat, sad.

“Jeez,” said Hoshi. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No, no, no,” Jun said hastily. He hadn’t realized his mood had been so obvious in his tone, or maybe Hoshi just knew him really well. “I’m sorry. It’s not that. I’ve been calling Seungcheol nonstop since yesterday and he hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I’m happy to hear your voice. Are you guys okay?”

He could picture Hoshi’s relieved, understanding smile in his head. He was the nicest guy Jun knew.

“We’re fine,” Hoshi said. “My parents and are at Liberty.”

“You’re still at school?” Jun was looking out the living room window, holding back the curtain with his free hand. (He never could hold his phone between his shoulder and his ear like his mother and aunts.) The snow was really piling up and Jun wondered if he should offer to help shovel. Would that get him in Hoseok’s good graces?

“Yup. It’s a temporary shelter for people displaced by the storm. My parents volunteered. There’s hundreds of cots set up in the gym and in the cafeteria. There’s people here making food. Yesterday, before the roads got _really_ bad, people were dropping off old blankets and jackets. It was actually kind of nice. The good of humanity, you know?”

“You’re good people,” said Jun. He was distracted. There were numbers swirling around his head. 57 calls to Seungcheol, 345 people dead, seventeen years on earth but with not a whole lot to show for it. “You and your parents, I mean. The best I know.”

Though Jun couldn’t see him, he knew Hoshi waved his hand dismissively.

“There’s much better people out there,” he said. “But enough about me. How are you? My parents were worried about you. They told me to cal. You’re home, right?”

Jun looked around the small, empty living room.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Jun didn’t know how to explain it and that was what he told Hoshi.

“The important thing,” said Jun, “is that I’m safe.”

“That’s what matters,” said Hoshi. “Hold on a second, Jun.” Hoshi covered his phone with his hand and conducted a brief conversation with someone Jun couldn’t see. “Jun? I’ve got to go. Someone showed up with supplies. Text me. Keep me in the loop. I’ll see you soon, okay? Be safe.”

“Thanks, Hosh,” said Jun. “You, too.”

Jun hung up, then sunk into the faded brown armchair beside the couch.

“Was it your friend?” Yuju asked enthusiastically, joining Jun in the living room seconds later. “The one you’ve been calling?”

Jun shook his head. His arm rested aptly on the armrest while his fingers tugged restlessly on the split ends of his bangs.

“Different friend,” he said quietly.

He didn’t like the way Yuju and Hyojin were walking on eggshells around him. He was a kid but that didn’t mean he needed to be treated with kid gloves. So what if he’d cried? And so what if he hadn’t known Jeonghan all that well? Hearing his name like that, so cold and clinical from some local newscaster who’d never know how generous and witty he was – it was gutting.

And then there was Seungcheol. Poor, sweet, sensitive Seungcheol who acted tough but had a tender heart and who had already dealt with more than enough grief for one lifetime. How badly he must have been hurting, how shattered that tender heart must have been. Jun wanted to see him, wanted to talk to him, wanted to comfort him the way Seungcheol had always comforted him. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t talk to him. He couldn’t contact him because Seungcheol had blocked his calls after #13.

_Lucky #13._

He needed to stop thinking about Jeonghan or he’d cry again.

Jun redirected all of his pain and loneliness and anxiety and fear into another emotion – pure rage.

“I should have killed those looters,” he said to Yuju, his hand curling into a fist.

“You’re nuts,” she said. “There were four of them and they were armed. They would have killed _you_. What’s your boss’ name? Something funny? Krustofsky?”

Jun glared at her.

“Kobylanski,” he said.

“Right, that. Mr. Kobylanski wouldn’t want you to _die_ over Doritos and powdered milk, okay? You kept us both safe. They didn’t burn the store to the ground and nobody died. Kobylanski has insurance for a reason. That’ll cover the damages and the stolen food. But get it out of your head that you should have fought back. That would have been stupid. And I’m really, really glad that you aren’t stupid. For both of our sakes. Okay?”

Jun didn’t say anything.

He felt so small, so young, so _helpless_.

His parents were stuck in China and he couldn’t do anything.

His street had been blocked off and he couldn’t do anything.

His store had gotten robbed and he couldn’t do anything.

Hoseok was a grade-A dick and he couldn’t do anything.

Jeonghan was dead and he couldn’t do anything.

344 other people were dead and he couldn’t do anything.

The snow was _still_ coming down and he couldn’t do anything.

He was angry and hurt and agitated and scared and he wanted to lash out, wanted to let the world, the universe and the storm know how mad he was, but that wasn’t an option so he sat in Hoseok’s ugly armchair and picked at the fabric with his thumbnail.

“Why don’t we make ourselves useful?” Yuju suggested, clapping her hands together.

Jun looked at her. She really _was_ pretty. He could appreciate that even now.

“How?”

She shrugged.

“We’ll shovel,” she said, “or salt something. We could rummage through the closets and look for supplies. At the very least, we could snoop through Hoseok’s stuff. Maybe we can find one of his baby pictures and embarrass him. Something during potty training would be nice. Knock him down a few pegs.”

In spite of everything, Jun smirked.

“Okay,” he said.

“Hoseok!” Yuju shouted, standing up and nodding her chin towards the front door. “We’re going to go check out the snow!”

“Don’t go outside!” he warned and Yuju rolled her eyes.

Jun rolled his, too.

“We’re just going to _look_!” she called back. “Jesus.”

“Don’t go outside!”

“We _know_ ,” she said. “Shut up.”

Jun smiled again.

“Shut up,” he repeated quietly.

 

* * *

**Hoseok  
**

* * *

  
As soon as Jun and Yuju were out of earshot, Hyojin locked onto Hoseok like a heat-seeking missile.

He hadn’t expected anything less. He’d known her two full days but he already knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to make this easy on him.

“Your bedroom,” she said, glaring. “Now.”

He walked the walk of a man headed for death row, leading her to his room and shutting the door behind him. The door to his closet was still ajar, the light still on. He hated how vulnerable he felt, how exposed. It was like she’d unzipped him. If she’d seen what was in his closet, it was like she’d flayed him, like she’d peeled away all his skin, ripped aside all his muscle, cast aside all his bones. It was like she could look right into his soul.

How much had she seen?

How much did she know?

She stopped beside the closet, her eyes moving between it and Hoseok like she was reconfirming what it was she wanted to talk about.

But he wasn’t an idiot.

“How much did you see?” he asked, his throat dry.

“Enough to have a whole lot of questions,” she said.

Hoseok sighed. He gestured to his desk chair and waited for her to sit, then took a seat on the edge of his bed.

“You had no right to go in there,” he said lowly. It was a weak argument, especially since it was moot. Now that she’d seen it, the hows and whys didn’t really matter. “I don’t technically have to tell you anything.”

“You owe me,” she said and Hoseok laughed.

“How the fuck do you figure? I gave _you_ a place to say. I helped _you_. How do I owe you anything?”

Hyojin pointed to the closet.

“Whatever you have in there,” she said, “whatever secret you’re keeping is fucking _dangerous_ and you owe it to me to tell me what the fuck I’m up again, Hoseok.”

They stared at each other for a while. Outside, the snow fell. The wind blew. People died. And nothing was going to change, nothing was going to get better, until Hoseok opened his mouth.

So he did just that, not sure of what was going to come out when he did.

“I’ve been through this before,” he said, speaking softly.

Hyojin blinked.

“A blizzard?” she offered up when he didn’t continue.

“It’s not just a blizzard,” he said, almost whispering. He looked down at his shoes, wringing his hands because he didn’t know what else to do with them.

Hyojin sighed. It was restrained, probably the only thing she could do to keep from rolling her eyes at him, and she ran a hand through her blonde hair. The more time he spent with her, the prettier Hoseok found her but that was a secondary opinion since he also found her incredibly irritating. (Less so than Yuju and _much_ less so than Jun.)

“Okay,” she said patiently. “I need you to cut the bullshit and talk to me, Hoseok. _What_ have you been through before? What the fuck _happened_ to you?”

Hoseok felt cold. It had nothing to do with the snow outside or the mere t-shirt covering his chest and everything to do with the fact that he’d never told this story out loud before.

“Okay,” he said, trying to contain his nerves. He took a deep breath, squeezed his hands into fists to stop them from shaking, then began his own autopsy. “Four years ago, I lived in a really small town in Korea. Population was under two-thousand. Everybody knew everybody. A storm rolled through in early January just like this. Nobody saw it coming. It snowed nonstop for almost a hundred hours. Fifteen people died including my best friend Jimin. And fifteen people? In a town of fifteen-hundred? The entire town was in mourning. Some people got in car accidents. Some people got trapped by the snow and froze to death. Some people just slipped on the ice and cracked their heads open. It was really ugly.”

“Jesus,” Hyojin exhaled. “I’m so sorry.”

“But that wasn’t all,” he said, peering up at her for just a moment. “The snow stopped for two days. The sun came out. People thought they were safe. They left their homes to start charities for those affected. They ran coat drives and canned food drives and opened up the high school and the churches. They buried the dead.”

“That’s nice,” Hyojin said. She didn’t understand. How was he supposed to make her understand? She wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen it. How could she understand? “People coming together like that.”

Hoseok shook his head.

“On the third day,” he said, “it started to snow again.”

Hyojin was surprised.

“Another storm?”

“It wasn’t like the first storm,” he said. He gestured to the window in his bedroom. “You think this is bad? The second storm was worse. The snow was relentless. The ice, the wind. It didn’t seem possible that it could be that _cold_. There is such a thing as being too cold to snow but the second storm didn’t care. And people didn’t just die, Hyojin. They _disappeared_.”

“What do you mean?”

Hoseok had already started to sweat. Remembering everything was painful enough but to talk about it? That was akin to reliving it. He could see Wonwoo in his robe, sitting in their living room. Hoseok’s cheeks had already been wet with tears, still mourning Jimin. And then Wonwoo was up and out the door, the wind blowing snow into their house.

“People disappeared,” he repeated. “Eight of them from my town. They vanished into thin air. They didn’t slip and fall. They didn’t freeze to death. Their bodies weren’t recovered. Their remains weren’t found. They just disappeared.” He took another deep breath, one that rumbled in his chest and said, “My brother Wonwoo was one of them.”

Hyojin’s face went white.

Hoseok understood that. She didn’t believe that eight people could vanish into thin air (Hoseok wouldn’t have believed it five years ago either) but she _did_ feel the pang of grief associated with being a good, empathetic human being.

“Hoseok, I’m so, so–”

He lifted a hand to stop her.

“Don’t,” he said. “Let me finish. Trust me. This is important. I know you don’t believe me yet. You think I’m just talking about two freak blizzards, that this has nothing to do with what’s going on outside but I need you to really listen to me. _Really_ fucking listen, Hyojin, okay? It’s all going to sound crazy but I just need you to take it on faith and let me try to explain everything.”

There was a pause, a beat, a moment so silent that Hoseok swore he could hear it snow, then Hyojin said, “Okay. Go ahead.”

“I lost the two most important people in my life,” he said. He didn’t say it for sympathy but because it was the truth. “So I became obsessed with this storm. I did a lot of research. I had to make it make sense. I had to figure out what happened. I had to find out what happened to my brother, where he went. I had to find him.”

“Did you?” Hyojin asked. It was a cruel question but she didn’t mean anything by it. Hoseok had stopped speaking and several seconds had passed. It was a natural place for the conversation to go.

It still felt like she’d punched Hoseok in the stomach.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “But I _did_ find something else. These storms?” He gestured to the empty air around him. “They happen once a year like clockwork. Two storms in the same town. People die in the first storm and people just fucking _vanish_ in the second. It’s always the same but the numbers change. The towns always have a population of under two thousand. It always snows for the first four days, then stops for two, then snows for three more. The number of people who die is always more than the number of people who go missing. And it’s been happening every year since 2001. It happens all over the world. Korea, Russia, Canada, Japan, China. But this is the first time it’s ever happened in the US.”

Hyojin didn’t move, didn’t speak. Her forehead was creased, her eyes narrowed. Hoseok suspected that that was about as good a reaction as any. Frankly, it was a better one than he’d expected. Where was the laughter? The disbelief? The swear words? The mockery?

He didn’t have it in him to play the part of the quiet, brooding asshole. The real Hoseok was still inside of him somewhere, still locked deep down in his heart, and that was the Hoseok that was shining through. He was tired, broken, and sharing this story was taking everything out of him. Every ounce of strength, every ounce of stability, every ounce of bravery was spilling out of him with every word he spoke.

He didn’t have the strength to be a jerk. He had just barely enough to tell the truth.

“You have to know how this sounds,” Hyojin said softly.

Hoseok nodded slowly.

“Hyojin,” he said, “I don’t care if you believe me. I know it’s the truth. I’ve researched this so extensively. I’ve spoken to so many people who have lived through their own storms, people who have lost someone just like I did. It happens every year. People die and people go missing and these towns are never the same but they’re small towns so nobody cares. It never makes the news. No one knows about it.”

“And if it’s happening here?” Hyojin asked cautiously. He couldn’t tell if her question was serious or if she was humoring him. Frankly, he didn’t care.

“If it’s happening here,” he said, “then it’s happening all across the state and not just Chicago. Twelve-million people live in Illinois, Hyojin. The number of people who go missing, the number of people who die? It’s proportional.

“So,” she began, “if fifteen people died in your town of fifteen-hundred–”

Nodding very slowly, Hoseok finished for her.

“Then almost 130,000 people will die between today and tomorrow,” he said, having already done the math. “And almost 70,000 will go missing.”

“The news said only 345 people have died,” Hyojin argued. “And nobody has been reported missing.”

“Those figures are just for Chicago and they’re inaccurate. Everything is happening so quickly. People don’t even know yet. When the snow stops, when the sun comes out, it’ll be different. We are in the middle of the first storm, okay? Today’s only day three. We have at least twenty-four more hours of this. We have to stay inside and stay safe until it stops. I really wanted to believe that it was a normal storm, that it was just snow but…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t want to tell her about the laughter he’d heard outside the Grab-N-Go, about the shadows he saw around the corners. No way she’d believe him. It wasn’t worth sharing. It wasn’t worth scaring her. “We have to wait it out.”

“And then what?” Hyojin asked. “If what you’re saying is true and the snow is going to stop tomorrow, what do we do then? What do we do when it stops?”

“We need to get out of the city,” he said. He spoke so quietly, she barely heard him. But when she did, she sat up straighter.

“Excuse me?”

“When the snow stops,” he said, “we need to get out of the city. We need to get as far away from Chicago as we can before the second storm starts. It’s our only chance. Even if we miraculously survive this storm and don’t disappear during the second, this city will be in shambles when the snow stops falling. In a week’s time, nearly 200,000 people will be gone. You think this city is dangerous on a normal day? People are going to burn it to the ground. They’re going to be scared, confused, angry. Forget about looting. All bets will be off. I don’t personally want to go down with the ship. When the snow stops, we need to get out of here.”

“And go where?” Hyojin demanded. Hoseok hadn’t expected her to be so patient. He hadn’t expected her to hear him out. As such, he hadn’t expected to get this far in his story. He hadn’t expected to be sharing his plan with her.

“I know a place,” he said. “It’s in Effingham, about two-hundred miles from here. I have a friend. His name is Yoongi. He believes in stuff like this. He knows that the world is bigger than just us, that horrible things happen with no explanation, stuff way more than just terror attacks and mass shootings. He follows these blizzards, too. He’s got a bunker. He has enough room for all of us. We’ve talked about it before, that if something happened, I could just show up and he’d let me in.”

“You mean you know a crazy survivalist who believes in conspiracy theories?” she blurted. Her disbelief was clearer now, dripping off her words and wrinkling her face. “You want us to try and drive two-hundred miles in this? To some lunatic with a bunker that might not even let us in?”

“If I’m right,” Hoseok snapped, “it is our only chance. We are sitting ducks here. You might not believe me and that is your fucking right, Hyojin, but I have done this before. I saw what it did to my community. I saw what it did to my family. It killed my best friend and it took my brother. This isn’t just some fucking snow. This is bad. I thought moving to the other side of the world meant I was safe but it’s here. It’s not just in Chicago but all of Illinois. And if it can get to the US, it means that all bets are off. Whatever this is, it’s not going to stop. We need to use our one chance and get the hell out of dodge before shit really hits the fan.”

He stopped speaking and stared at the floor. It was a long while before Hyojin spoke and when she did, her tone had changed.

“We need to get Junghwa first,” she said.

“Hyojin–”

“No!” she barked. “Fuck you, Hoseok. If you’d told me sooner, we could have _gotten_ her sooner and this wouldn’t be an issue. You want to go on a little field trip to Effingham? Fine. I’ll bite. But I’m not going anywhere without Junghwa.”

“Hyojin,” he said miserably, “if I’m right, there’s a really good chance that your friend is dead already. I’m _sorry_.”

But Hyojin didn’t budge.

“I am not leaving without her,” she said. “Whatever we do, it’s _after_ we get Junghwa. If not, you can make the trip on your own. I’m not going anywhere without her.”

_She’s hopeful. Doesn’t she know that’ll kill her?_

“Fine,” he said. The agreement was like bile on his tongue but what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t going to change her mind. That she refused to leave her friend behind was admirable. It was stupid and ill-advised and dangerous but it was admirable.

 _Admirable gets you killed,_ said one voice in his head.

 _No, admirable gets you taken_ , said another.

“What the fuck is out there?” Hyojin asked, looking to the window. “Aliens? Monsters?”

Hoseok just shrugged.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. And that was the truth. Nobody knew. He didn’t know what was out there laughing, what was watching them, what was snatching people up, never to be seen or heard from again. He just knew that it was real. “Whatever it is, it’s powerful and it’s dangerous. Jimin died in a car wreck but the accident never made sense. There were no skid marks. The cops never found what it was that Jimin hit, or what hit Jimin. And my brother?” Hoseok winced. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about Wonwoo throwing on his boots and running into the snow in his robe. He couldn’t get that image out of his head no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he prayed, no matter how much he drank. “Whatever it is, if it’s aliens or monsters or just some fucking storm from hell, it’s stronger than us. We have a very small window, a very specific chance of survival, and we have to take it.”

“So what do we do now?” Hyojin asked, her breathing shaky. She was putting on a brave face, remaining strong and stoic while she hedged her bets and planned her next move. She reminded Hoseok so much of Wonwoo and he hated it. It was why he’d offered her a ride home that day and it was why he was still trying to save her now.

_It won’t make up for Wonwoo, you know. It won’t bring him back._

“We need wheels,” he said, his tone casual, his shoulders shrugging. “We can’t make the drive in my Prius. My car doesn’t stand a chance against this snow. But all we can do is pack it up and try to find something better. If we have to steal a truck or a van with snow tires, so be it. I’ve got a map. I can get us to Effingham. We just need to find a better ride.”

Hyojin nodded, listening, the cogs in her head spinning.

“What about Yuju and Jun?”

Hoseok made a face.

“They’re useless,” he said, “but they can come, too. I suppose it won’t be the worst thing to have some extra bodies.”

He didn’t mean it. He didn’t want to bring them along. What good were they? Yuju was just another mouth to feed and Jun? He was weak. They’d slow him and Hyojin down. It was bad enough that they had to make a detour to track down a dead girl but to lug along some doe-eyed co-ed and her whiny teenage sidekick?

 _Wonwoo would help them_ , said one voice in his head.

 _Wonwoo got himself killed_ , said another, _and you’re not Wonwoo._

But Wonwoo wasn’t dead!

They were twins. If Wonwoo was dead, Hoseok would know it.

“Then our first step,” Hyojin said, “is to tell them what you just told me. Get them up to speed. Let them know what we’re up against.”

Hoseok nodded, pretending that he agreed, then noticed something he somehow hadn’t before.

“Is that the same outfit you were wearing on Friday?” he asked.

Hyojin looked down at her sweater and leggings, half-confused, then nodded.

“It’s the only thing I have,” she said. “Remember? I hadn’t exactly packed a bag Friday morning.”

Hoseok had been so caught up in his past and in himself that he hadn’t noticed. Jun and Yuju had bags with them. They had at least a change of clothes each. All Hyojin had was whatever was in her purse that day in class.

“Take a shower,” he said, “while we still have hot water. You can wear something of mine.”

“Hoseok, you don’t have to–”

He ignored her.

“If we’re going to be venturing out into the storm, you’ll need something warmer anyway. Go. Shower. I’ll find something that’ll fit you. Afterwards, we’ll talk to Yuju and Jun.”

She hesitated but then relented. That seemed to be their dynamic. He offered reluctant hospitality and she begrudgingly accepted his charity. Neither of them particularly loved it but they’d quickly made their peace with it.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Hoseok. And I’m sorry about–”

She gestured to the closet.

She was sorry for snooping? Or she was sorry he’d lost everyone he ever loved?

She didn’t stay and expand on it. In a second, she was out the door and into the bathroom, leaving Hoseok alone with his thoughts and his closet.

It wasn’t an ideal scenario, being faced with the task of fleeing the city with three complete strangers, but when had his life ever given him an ideal scenario?

He rubbed his face with both hands, hard enough that it hurt, then dug through his dresser drawers to find a pair of sweatpants and a thermal shirt that would fit Hyojin.

This wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t ever want to go through this again. He didn’t want to make friends. He didn’t want to try and save the world. He didn’t want to look for a new car and flee the city. He didn’t want to go to Effingham and stay with Yoongi. He didn’t want any of it.

He’d just wanted to forget.

But the universe or the aliens, or the monsters, or the snow, or whatever it was that laughed in the wind and stayed just out of sight wasn’t going to let him off that easily.

No, he’d have to give up his couch, his car, his guest room, his ramen, his sweatpants, his thermal, his closet and his sense of security first.

He’d have to fight for his right to forget.

And he’d have to do so alongside Hyojin, Yuju and Jun.

It wasn’t ideal but, then, neither had the last four years.

With clothes in hand, Hoseok went for the door but his hand hovered above the doorknob and his gaze lingered on his closet.

The fliers, the photos, the box of their stuff.

How much had she seen?

Did it even matter?

He swallowed hard and turned the door handle.

Saving them wouldn’t bring back Wonwoo or Jimin but it was a start.

 _Just don’t die in the process_ , said one voice inside his head.

 _Or do_ , said another _, and be free of all this once and for all.  
_

 

* * *

**Yuju  
**

* * *

  
Eavesdropping was rude but, hey, so was conning people.

It had never stopped Yuju before, nor had it stopped her parents, and so it hadn’t really gotten in her way that morning either.

She’d found Jun something to do, assigned him a task to keep him busy so that his guilt and anxiety didn’t eat him alive, and then sat outside Hoseok’s door, listening.

She’d seen the way Hyojin was staring at him during breakfast.

Something was up and she needed to know what. There was already a whole fuck ton of stuff she knew Hyojin and Hoseok weren’t telling her but things were getting tenser and more serious. 345 people were dead and the snow wasn’t letting up. She didn’t know what they were up to but she knew that Hyojin and Hoseok had some sort of bond that transcended the group and Yuju didn’t trust either of them.

Not yet.

So she eavesdropped.

On behalf of her safety and the safety of the young, scared Wen Junhui, she eavesdropped.

And for whatever it was worth, she believed every word out of Hoseok’s mouth.

Yuju was lonely and cynical and guarded and morally unscrupulous but she wasn’t stupid. All of that free time she had while she _wasn’t_ socializing was easily spent on the dark web and Yuju had been in more than her share of chatrooms, reading all about the things people were too scared to talk about on Reddit or Tumblr.

There were dark forces at play all over the world and all kinds of worlds outside of theirs. Why should this be any different? No matter how alone she felt, humans weren’t alone in the universe. Not by a longshot. And though she didn’t know if it was aliens or monsters or just some fucking storm from hell, she knew that Hoseok was right.

They had to get out of dodge.

And she knew what she could do to help.

That was crucial to her own survival. Hoseok already considered her dead weight, a liability. He didn’t think she had anything to offer. Though Jun drove him up a wall, his position at the Grab-N-Go _had_ gotten them extra food and water. If necessary, they could always let themselves back into the store and restock, meaning that Jun was more of an asset than she was.

Though playing the damsel in distress had earned her Jun’s protection, appearing weak and useless only hurt her chances with Hoseok, and Yuju didn’t want to wake up the next morning and discover that Hoseok had deemed her expendable.

But Yuju wasn’t useless. She wasn’t weak. And she wasn’t expendable.

She knew where they could get a truck.

There was a knot in her stomach. She didn’t know what came next. She knew that their whole world was about to change but didn’t quite know what more that entailed. But sitting in the dark, squatting in the hallway and listening to a conversation that wasn’t meant for her, Choi Yuju saw one very slim, very obvious shot at survival.

And maybe even a shot at friendship.

She would get them a truck and the rest would be up to Hoseok, the snow and whatever else lived alongside them in the universe.

Yuju heard Hoseok suggest Hyojin take a shower and she sprinted off towards the kitchen before either could catch her.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

  **Hyojin**

* * *

 

It was noon when they sat down with Jun and Yuju.

The four of them squeezed into Hoseok’s living room for the first time since they’d all ended up together. Jun stayed on the floor, sitting in the middle of his makeshift bed. Hoseok was in the arm chair, eyes fixed on the coffee table, otherwise unmoving. Yuju sat alone on the couch, looking as tense as tense as she felt, and Hyojin leaned against the wall near the kitchen.

Her hair was still wet from the shower and she squeezed excess water into a faded burgundy hand towel that Hoseok had left on the sink for her. His clothes were ill-fitting, the sleeves too long, the pants too baggy, but they were warm. It wasn’t much – a long-sleeved t-shirt, navy blue, and grey sweatpants – but it was something. He’d done a small load of laundry, washing her clothes and a handful of his own, which meant she didn’t currently have underwear or socks, so she was physically uncomfortable but otherwise okay.

This was progress, wasn’t it? Hoseok had a plan and that meant they had a chance.

She watched Jun and Yuju’s faces very carefully as Hoseok told his story. He spoke more slowly now, choosing each word carefully. Hyojin couldn’t help but notice the way his verbiage changed, even if it was slight. He spoke differently to her than he did to them. When he’d told her, when he’d spilled his guts, he spoke hastily, emotionally. Though he was still very guarded, walls built up high and reinforced with emotional steel, his speech was raw.

He’d gutted himself.

But now, he was more reserved. Only twenty minutes has passed but he’d composed himself. He spoke evenly. He was calculated. He told them about the storm in Korea, about the timeline, that he’d lost two people very close to him but he didn’t speak their names. Curtly, he said his friend died in the first storm. With even more cold stoicism, he said his brother disappeared in the second. Quickly, he moved the story forward, telling them about his research and about all the other storms that fit the very same schedule.  

He explained his plan, told them that, if history repeated itself, the snow would stop the very next day, and told them that _that_ was when they needed to make their move. He told them that they needed to find a car, that the Prius likely wouldn’t be able to make the trip, and that they needed to get to Effingham. He told them that he knew someone with a bunker, someone he trusted, but that the trip could take three whole days to complete. He told them sternly and clearly that there was no guarantee. He also explained that they needed to make a stop first. Shooting a loaded glance Hyojin’s way, he explained that they needed to try and find her friend Junghwa before they did anything else.

At no point did Jun or Yuju say a word.

“I understand if you don’t believe me,” Hoseok said, “and I understand if you want no part in this. But if you want to survive this storm, if you want to survive _both_ of these storms, this is your very best shot.” He ran a hand through his hair, then swallowed hard. “Believe me, I know how it sounds. Four years ago, I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

“I believe you,” said Yuju.

“I do, too,” squeaked Jun.

Hoseok’s eyebrows arched just slightly and though he didn’t say it, Hyojin knew what he was thinking – _You believe me? Really? You do?_

“I don’t really feel like disappearing,” Yuju said earnestly. “If you say you’ve been through it, if you’ve somehow lived to tell the tale, fine. Lead the way. Who am I to say boo?” She reached forward, took her mug of tea from the coffee table, and lifted it as if to give a toast. “Here, here. You lead, we’ll follow.”

Hoseok swallowed again and looked to the group’s youngest, most anxious member.

“Jun?” he prompted.

“I don’t want to die,” Jun said. He was hugging a pillow to his chest, the one Hoseok had given him to sleep with, and looked quite a bit younger than seventeen embracing it. “My parents are in China, all of my friends are stranded far away from me, and I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Hyojin said and Hoseok shot her a look that told her not to make promises she couldn’t keep. She made the executive decision to ignore him and instead said, “As long as you’re with us, you’re safe. Okay?”

Jun nodded once.

“Okay,” he said.

Despite the fact that he considered both of them expendable liabilities, there was distinct relief written all over Hoseok’s face, something that would have surprised Hyojin if she hadn’t been able to see right through him. Hoseok acted tough but he was afraid. And whether he liked it or not, there was strength in numbers. With Jun and Yuju on their side, they had a better chance of survival.

At least Hyojin thought so.

“What next?” Yuju asked. “What do we do now?”

“We need to find a car,” Hoseok said, exhaling, “or a truck.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his eyes and forehead with his palms. “There’s no way my car will make it all the way to Effingham in this snow. It barely has four-wheel drive. I don’t even have snow tires.” He nodded his chin at Hyojin. “And if we find her friend, there won’t be enough room for all five of us _and_ our supplies.” Hyojin really didn’t like his use of the word _if_ but chose not to verbalize her objection. “I hate to say it but we might have to steal one. If we see one out while we’re driving, we’re going to have to take it. He laughed to himself, humorless, and added, “Any of you know how to hotwire a car?”

“I can get us a truck,” Yuju said, something that got the attention of everyone else in the room.

“Pardon me?” Hoseok asked.

“I can get us a truck,” she repeated. “I know a guy. If you can get the Prius to this one autobody shop across town, I can do the rest.”

Hoseok licked his lips. He looked questioningly to Hyojin who had nothing to offer. She was as surprised as he was but she hid it well. Though she’d been prepared to fight on Jun and Yuju’s behalf, ready to defend them and declare that they’d pull their weight and help the group if given the opportunity, she hadn’t expected Yuju to prove herself so quickly.

Hoseok nodded slowly, processing two pieces of new information. The first was that they’d have access to a truck, increasing the likelihood of their successful journey and subsequent survival tenfold. The second was that Yuju wasn’t useless after all.

“If the timeline holds up,” he said after a beat, “it should stop snowing tomorrow night. That would give us seventy-two hours to get to Effingham.”

“What if we can’t?” Jun asked. He was staring into space, not looking at anyone in particular when he spoke. “What if we start driving when the snow stops but we can’t get there in time? Or what if it starts snowing again _while_ we’re driving?”

Hoseok shook his head again and said, “That’s not an option.”

“But what if–”

“It’s not an option!” Hoseok shouted. He spoke more cruelly to Jun than to anyone else and though Hyojin had generally come around to the opinion that Hoseok was a decent person, she wanted to slap him across the face every time he snapped at him. “We’ll spend the rest of the day packing. We’ll tally the food, make sure everyone has enough clothes, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning to find Junghwa. After that, we’ll get the truck.”

“Then what?” Hyojin asked, speaking to Hoseok for the first time since they’d left his bedroom.

Hoseok exhaled, ran a hand through his hair once more, then stood.

“Then we wait for the snow to stop,” he said, “we begin our trek to Effingham and we try not to die.”

 

* * *

  **Jun**

* * *

   
There wasn’t much for him to pack.

In his soccer bag was a pair of headphones, his science notebook and two candy bars. That first night at the Grab-N-Go, Jun had layered all of his clothes, meaning he was wearing his gym t-shirt and shorts underneath his sweatshirt, hoodie and jeans. He wore two pairs of socks and a beat-up pair of Vans and that was all he had to his name.

Some junky clothes, a pair of off-brand headphones, a ratty notebook with notes he’d always copied from his friend named Jihoon, and two Snickers bars.

Some life he’d lived. Seventeen years on planet earth, seventeen years in Chicago, Illinois, seventeen years alive and breathing and all he had to show for it was some candy and a few pages of notes on the solar system.

But Hyojin said he wasn’t going to die.

Hyojin said he was safe.

He didn’t know Hyojin all that well, knew that she preferred powdered doughnuts to sprinkle doughnuts and that she drank her coffee black with lots of sugar, but he trusted her.

He couldn’t really explain it. Maybe he was just a boy, willing to believe anything a pretty girl said to him. Maybe he was just a dumb, scared kid, happy to go along with anything and anyone who promised him safety. He didn’t know what it was. He just knew that he wanted to live to see his eighteenth birthday, live to kiss a pretty girl, live to see his parents again and if Hyojin, Hoseok and Yuju cold somehow make that happen, he would follow them right into the Valley of Death, no questions asked.

He was packed and ready to go in five minutes. For the next couple of hours, he sat on his bed (the pile of towels and blankets Hoseok had given him), counting and recounting all four of his belongings while everyone else worked to prepare for their trip.

If he died tomorrow, all he’d have to show for it were a bunch of stinky clothes and a couple of chocolate bars.

He wished he could take a shower.

Seconds later, Hyojin appeared like an angel, handing him a towel and offering exactly that.

“Hit the showers, kid,” she said. “You stink.” His face flushed bright red. It was too cold to overheat and sweat but he was still a teenage boy. Between the adrenaline, the testosterone and the _fear_ , he’d been sweating for two straight days. If the girls were able to smell him, things were even worse than he thought, and he was mortified. But Hyojin didn’t seem to care. In her other hand was a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of black pants and a pair of socks. “You’re about the same size as Hoseok. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll find you a belt. Throw your clothes on the floor outside the bathroom. We’re doing laundry.”

Jun didn’t ask any questions.

He took a quick shower, relishing every second he spent under the stream of hot water, then dried off and changed into Hoseok’s clothes. Once he felt and smelled better, he emerged, drying his hair with his towel and looking for Hoseok to thank him.

If he was willing to give Jun his clothes, maybe he didn’t hate him after all.

He found him with Yuju. They were standing in the kitchen, separating their rations into piles. Hoseok was talking but Yuju didn’t seem to be that interested in what he was saying. There was a duffle bag on the table already half-filled with nonperishables and Hoseok appeared to be deciding what else to bring.

“Canned foods are good,” he said, “but if we have to walk, they might slow us down.”

“I can carry them,” Jun suggested.

Hoseok glanced up to acknowledge him, then nodded once.

“Sure, fine,” he said. “Pack the cans. But bring four spoons and a can opener, too. They’re in that drawer.”

Yuju went to fetch them just as Hyojin entered the kitchen.

“Five spoons,” she corrected. “Junghwa is going to be fine when we get there, okay? Stop being so negative.”

Hoseok huffed in response.

Jun took a seat at the table and, for the first time all day, he actually started to think.

The story Hoseok had told them was incredible. The idea that this wasn’t just an isolated incident, that it wasn’t just a freak blizzard plaguing their city, was mind-boggling. It had happened before? All over the world? People died and disappeared and entire communities were buried in snow and left reeling and dripping in blood and nobody knew about it? Hoseok had lost his best friend and his brother, meaning that he knew more about these storms than anyone. But how could someone just up and disappear?

“Who else disappeared?” Jun asked. Yuju and Hyojin looked first to Jun, then to Hoseok.

“What?”

“In the blizzard,” Jun said. “The one in Korea. You said people died in the first storm, right?”

Hoseok glanced around the room as though he wasn’t sure whether or not Jun was kidding.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Mostly accidents. Car wrecks, things like that.”

“Right, and then, in the second storm, people disappeared?”

Hoseok bit the inside of his cheek.

“Yes,” he gritted. “People disappeared.”

“What kind of people disappeared?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Hoseok asked.

“Not just in Korea,” Jun asked. His mind was racing. “All across the world, in all the research you did, what type of people died? What type of people disappeared? Were they good people? Bad people? Did they have anything in common? Anything at all?”

“This fucking kid,” Hoseok mumbled but Hyojin jumped to Jun’s defense anyway.

“Just answer him, Hoseok,” she said. She was nursing a bottle of Gatorade. Jun suspected she was hungry didn’t want to dip into their rations. “Jesus. The kid wants to know. We all have questions. What harm does it do to answer him?”

“Good people disappeared,” Hoseok snapped. “Good people. First-responders. People trying to help other people. Almost everyone who fucking disappeared was trying to help someone else when they vanished, okay? Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“What about the people who died?”

“Is this a fucking _Dateline_ interview? The people who died were all victims of circumstance. They were either being reckless, driving erratically and looting, or they dropped dead shoveling, or got launched out of the windshield of their fucking cars. Okay? Is that enough for you, Jun?”

Jun clicked his tongue and said, “Faeries.”

Everyone stared at him.

“Excuse me?” Yuju asked.

It took a minute for Jun to realize everyone was looking at him. He hadn’t even known that anyone had _heard_ him. But they had and now they were staring, unblinking, waiting for him to continue. He’d accidentally entered into a conversational commitment he hadn’t anticipated and now he had no choice but to elaborate.

“Faeries,” he repeated, his cheeks beginning to redden again. “I, uh, take a mythology class in school. We learn about all kinds of things, all types of folklore from all over the world. It’s really interesting. My teacher, Mr. Dennis, he’s got a thing about faeries. He says that they’re the most misunderstood being in all of folklore, that most people picture happy, bubbly, tiny creatures with wings and crowns and magic wands but that that can’t be farther than the truth. And, well, you know how some history teachers have a favorite battle or some English teachers have a favorite author, and if you want to buy some time in class, you ask them about it and they go off on a tangent? That’s Mr. Dennis and faeries. And none of the kids in my class ever want to work so we ask him about it a lot and he talks about it a lot.”

Yuju and Hyojin exchanged a concerned glance while Hoseok continued to stare through Jun’s entire soul.

“What’s your fucking point?”

“Mr. Dennis says that faeries live in a world that’s basically parallel to this one.” Jun gestured with his hands, holding them parallel to each other to illustrate his point. “They can come over if they want to and sometimes they do. He says that they’re mischievous. They can even be cruel or evil. It’s not like a pack of wolves or aliens with a hive mind. Faeries are individual creatures and they have personalities. He thinks they’re really powerful, sometimes powerful enough to distort reality or change the weather. He says they like to mess with humans. Sometimes it’s just pranks but sometimes it’s violence. At their core, though, they respect and admire goodness. You said all good people went missing, right? Helpers? Healers? Things like that?”

“Yeah,” Hoseok deadpanned. “What of it?”

Jun shrugged.

“Maybe that’s what’s happening here. Faeries value those qualities in humans. Maybe this is their opportunity to bring the good people back to their world.”

“What would faeries want with humans?” Yuju asked, and Hoseok nearly blew a gasket.

“What the fuck does it matter? It’s all bullshit. The kid is fucking with us.”

Jun ignored him.

“I have no idea what faeries would want,” he said. “I just know that they’re out there. Mr. Dennis is sure of it. They cross into our world to make trouble. They could be causing the accidents that kill people and using the snow to cover it up. Then, when the good people come out to help, they grab them and take them home. Faeries are mysterious. I don’t know why they do anything. There’s a saying, you know? It’s like ‘once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains has to be the truth, no matter how improbable.’ Mr. Dennis says that’s bullshit. And that’s the word he uses. He says that there’s no such thing as impossible and that once you eliminate the improbable, there’s usually truth in the supernatural. And in this case, that’s faeries.”

Hoseok threw his hands up in the air, then slammed them down onto the table, making silverware clatter and the bag of snacks shift.

“You’re a fucking faerie!” he roared. “Goddam it. Everyone just go the fuck to sleep.”

He stormed off down the hallway, slamming his bedroom door hard enough to shake the house and leaving Jun feeling like he just got slapped.

Hyojin hung her head and sighed, as annoyed with Hoseok as the rest of them, and said, “Yuju, why don’t you go shower? I’ll do one last load of laundry. Jun, help me pack the rest of the food, okay?”

Jun nodded, but looked away to hide the tears in his eyes.

Nothing he did was ever going to be good enough for Hoseok. He was going to die at seventeen, with a soccer bag full of chocolate and ripped note paper, and he was never going to kiss a girl or see his mother ever again.

He looked out the window as Yuju and Hyojin spoke quietly amongst themselves.

Outside, the snow showed no signs of stopping.  
  


* * *

  **Yuju**

* * *

  
Jun was already asleep when Yuju emerged from the shower.

It was a bit early for bed but growing exceedingly difficult to tell time without the benefit of sunshine.

She’d vacationed in Florida once with her family. They’d gotten a steep discount because it was hurricane season and, lo and behold, a hurricane rolled through Tampa Bay while they stayed at a cozy beach cottage. They were safe and sound, and the house held up fine, but they had no power. Without lights, it was hard _not_ to go to sleep when the sun went down, and the group’s current plight without sunlight reminded Yuju of that vacation, going to bed at seven o’clock and getting up eleven hours later, rested but confused.

Her internal clock was all over the place and apparently so was Jun’s.

Hyojin was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She’d allowed herself a granola bar after deciding that there was enough to last all four of them (five if they found her friend) a couple of days. Dark chocolate and almonds, one of Yuju’s favorites, too. Hyojin had made everyone eggs and fried rice for dinner but Hoseok hadn’t emerged from his bedroom since he exploded at Jun.

She didn’t _get_ him. She understood him better now (if what he’d said was true, he’d been through a great deal of trauma) but she still didn’t get him. Jun was innocent and a little over-the-top but he was harmless. He was a scared kid trapped in a house with strangers but Hoseok had been cruel to him at every opportunity. Yuju had overheard the conversation between Hyojin and Hoseok in which Hyojin demanded Hoseok give up a spare outfit to the young boy who’d spent the last several hours sitting in his own filth and shivering. Hoseok wanted no part in it but Hyojin insisted and eventually, Hoseok relented.

Hoseok had no interest in being kind to Jun, had no interest in being generous or in trying to comfort him, and he let it be known. But who did that help? What did he achieve by abusing a scared, sorry teenager currently in his care?

She didn’t understand him.

But she thought Hyojin might.

Hyojin who claimed that they were just classmates, not even friends but educational acquaintances, but who seemed to be his one and only confidant. Hyojin who had spent a good portion of the day in Hoseok’s room with the door shut. Hyojin who was sitting at the table, very obviously sporting Hoseok’s clothes.

“That Hoseok,” Yuju said quietly, stepping over Jun to get to the kitchen table. “He’s kind of hot, right? I think I’d sleep with him if he wasn’t such an enormous dick.”

Hyojin smirked. She’d been on her phone, probably texting her friend, the one they were set to rescue. To Yuju’s knowledge, that friend had yet to text back and it seemed to be making Hyojin increasingly anxious.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d sleep with him, too, if I slept with men.”

Yuju was flustered but she had been raised to force down her genuine feelings and put forth one hell of a poker face. This was no expectation.

“So this friend of yours,” she said, “Junghwa? The one we’re going to save tomorrow? She’s more than just a friend, isn’t she?”

Hyojin exhaled.

“No,” she said. “She _is_ just a friend. She is just a friend for reasons that seem really, really stupid now.”

Yuju smirked.

“You chickened out?”

“Every single time there was ever an opportunity,” Hyojin said. Her smile was completely void of all joy, all happiness, all warmth. It was a reflex. All Yuju saw on Hyojin’s face was regret. “And now it might be too late. What kind of crock is that?”

“Hey,” said Yuju. “Buck up. You’re this worried just because she’s not answering? Her power’s probably out which means her phone is probably dead. And you know something, Hyojin? A lot of great love stories begin with a great rescue. Tomorrow we’ll save your girl and then you’ll no longer have any excuse or any reason to put it off. Save her and confess your feelings. It’ll give you something to look forward to. Other than, you know, not dying hopefully.”

Hyojin grinned.

“Thanks,” she said. She took a sip of her tea, then nodded her chin at Yuju. “You going to bed?”

Yuju shook her head.

“Soon,” she said, “but not now. There’s no TV in the guest room.”

Hyojin nodded once.

“Rest up,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”

Yuju emerged from the kitchen to discover that Jun was gone.

There was a brief, inexplicable moment of panic where she genuinely thought he’d disappeared ahead of Hoseok’s schedule but once she gave it two seconds of thought, she turned to look down the hallway and towards the front door. Jun was there, peeking outside, holding the door open a couple of inches with his hand.

“You okay, kid?” she asked.

He jumped, startled, checked to see who it was, then went back to watching the snow. The porch light was on, giving him just enough light to watch it glisten and shine off the flakes.

“Just had a bad dream,” he said lowly. “Needed some air.”

His bag was packed beside his bed. Yuju had folded his clothes once they dried and zipped them away while he slept, endeared to find his school supplies and some candy.

He was just a kid and he’d been through hell, and Yuju had no interest in torturing him the way Hoseok did. What good did it do? Yuju had never considered herself to be a caregiver, never the warm, fuzzy or maternal type, but with Hyojin kicking herself for missed romantic moments and Hoseok edging closer and closer to the deep end, she was all Jun had.

“You’ve been really helpful so far, you know,” Yuju said. She could tell by the way he was standing that he didn’t believe her. It was all there in his body language. His head down, his shoulders slouched. He felt weak, small. And why wouldn’t he? He was separated from his family and friends, forced into a house with strangers, two of whom were older women who had repeatedly rejected him, and the only other guy around was making it a point to humiliate him whenever possible. Jun was feeling broken and weak and that was why Yuju had to reinforce that he wasn’t. “And brave. You kept everything together at the Grab-N-Go.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said quietly. The wind whipped outside, whistling and sending a draft down the hallway. “And it’s not going to work.”

“I’m not trying to _do_ anything,” she lied. “I just want you to know that even if Hoseok is an asshole, you’ve been helping since the beginning. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. I would have frozen to death outside the Grab-N-Go. _You_ let me in and _you_ kept me safe from the looters and _you_ tried to fix the window. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Jun didn’t respond. He kept his eyes pointed out the door, watching the snow like he was seeing anything remotely new. How many days had it been now? How many hours? How many inches? How many deaths?

“Do you want to try to use my phone?” she suggested. “Maybe we use different carriers. Maybe you could get ahold of your parents or that friend you keep calling. You probably miss them, right? I bet your mom would love to hear your voice.”

Silence.

Jun was hurt and embarrassed and stubborn. Yuju should have known she wouldn’t get anything out of him. But Yuju never did know when to quit.

“Do you miss them? Your parents? I know boys your age are weird with family but I’m sure you love your mom, right? You miss her? You’re welcome to try my phone. She misses you, too.”

Nothing.

She should have figured.

Respecting his feelings, and feeling a little bit silly, Yuju turned to leave.

“I’m worried about my friend Hoshi,” he blurted. Yuju stopped walking. “Him and his parents are good guys. They’re volunteers. They’re at the school right now, taking care of people. They’re exactly the type of people that went missing in Hoseok’s story. Hoshi isn’t answering his phone anymore. I can’t even warn him.”

Yuju took a deep breath.

“Hoseok is probably wrong, Jun,” she said. “His story was just that – a story. Who knows if it’s true? Who knows if any of that will come true? I sure don’t. And you don’t either. Your friend Hoshi is as safe as can be. If he’s with his parents inside a school, he’s even safer than we are. Hoseok doesn’t know what he’s talking about, okay? Everything is going to be fine.”

She always _had_ been a good liar.

“If it’s faeries,” Jun went on, “then it won’t be fine.”

Yuju frowned. She leaned against the wall, her shoulder perfectly in-line with a spot she thought would be great for a framed photo. But Hoseok didn’t have any framed photos. He had no pictures on his walls, no pictures anywhere. Yuju wondered if his house, small and dark and closed off, helped him escape his past. If anything he’d said was true, she understood his desire to run from it. She hadn’t even lost anybody and _she_ wanted to run from it.

“Why not?” she asked. “What did your teacher tell you about faeries?”

Yuju wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer. She just knew he needed to share it. Whatever it was, however horrible. It wasn’t like she didn’t believe him or Hoseok – she did. She believed in aliens and demons and ghosts and monsters. She believed in the multiverse, believed in other dimensions. Why not faeries?

But once she knew, she’d know. And there was no way to unring that bell.

“Faeries can be cruel,” he said, something he’d mentioned earlier. “But, like I said, there’s parts of humanity that they really admire. Mr. Dennis says that sometimes, they want to emulate humans so they take them back to their world and make them live there. He says that they prefer the innocent, the good-hearted. He says that’s why they usually take kids and it’s why so many kids vanish without a trace.”

“You think that’s what’s happening,” Yuju said. “You think they’re taking good people back with them.”

“Hoseok said that reckless people die in the first storm and good people go missing in the second,” he went on. “What if they use the storm to weed out the good and bad? What if they’re toying with people, killing them, causing accidents in the beginning and then taking the good people who try to help when all is said and done?” He mumbled some hushed words of panicked disbelief, then shook his head. “I wish I could talk to Mr. Dennis.”

Yuju had chills and it wasn’t related to the open door.

“You don’t need Mr. Dennis,” she said. She pushed off the wall, closed the gap between them and forced the door shut, cutting off the wind. Some snow had blown inside and melted once it met with the heat from the furnace, and tiny puddles of cold water nipped at Yuju’s bare feet. She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed, shaking him slightly as she spoke. “You have us. We are going to get you to Effingham and we’re going to be fine, you understand? It isn’t faeries. It isn’t monsters. It isn’t _anything_. It’s just snow, Jun. That’s all this is. Hoseok is delusional because something bad happened to him once and now he’s afraid. But we are going to get you back to your friends. We just have to get to Effingham first. Okay?” He didn’t say anything. He leaned his head against the door and stared at the wall across from him. Sighing, she gave him one last squeeze. “I’m going to bed,” she said finally, releasing her hold on him. “Don’t stay up too late. We leave at dawn.”

She was halfway down the hallway when he spoke, and he did so very quietly.

“I _do_ miss my parents,” he said. “I miss my mom. I miss my friends. I just hope I get to see them again.”

Yuju sighed.

“Don’t give up hope yet, Jun,” she said. “You have to believe that everything will work out and you have to hope that your loved ones are okay. Hope is what we need most right now. Hope for the future and hope for our fellow man, okay?” She forced a smile even though she didn’t feel it in her heart and said one last thing before she retired for the night, hoping it would bring him something like comfort where all else had failed. “Don’t forget – hope is the most important thing.”  
  


* * *

**Hoseok**

* * *

_  
Hope will kill you._

Hoseok sat on the floor of his closet, knowing damn well that these four walls made a better mausoleum than a closet anyway.

It had been a while since he’d done this, at least a few months since he just sat and stared. He’d go in from time to time, flip through his research, look through his photos, try to remember the good times, but he never stayed longer than a couple of minutes. Normally, he couldn’t bear it. But that night, he was hyperaware of the fact that it might be the last chance he ever got so sit and soak it all in.

He wasn’t confident that they’d make it to Effingham. He wasn’t confident that they’d even survive long enough to _reach_ Effingham. Hell, he wasn’t even confident that Yuju could actually get them a truck.

But he knew that it was very likely that this was the last night he’d ever spend in this house. It was the last night he’d ever have with his closet.

He knew it was unhealthy. He’d built a shrine. A shrine to Wonwoo. A shrine to Jimin. A shrine to everyone who had been lost to the storm. A shrine to all those who’d been forgotten once the snow melted away.

It was unhealthy but it was his and it hurt him to think he’d have to leave it.

He couldn’t possibly bring everything with him. He knew that he’d have to make choices, that he’d have to make cuts. At his feet was the last of the bags, the only one not already in the pile by the door. It was his backpack, small and grey, and he’d been procrastinating, not wanting to have to make the choice until he absolutely had to.

In one hand was the tie from Wonwoo’s bathrobe, the robe he’d been wearing when he went missing. In the other was Jimin’s favorite t-shirt.

Hope.

Hope was a killer.

How many months had he spent by the phone, waiting for someone to call about Wonwoo? How many times had the sun gone down, bathing him in darkness and allowing him the privacy to scream and cry and pray for Wonwoo’s safe return, just to come back up and mock him? How much time had he wasted _hoping_? What had it gotten him except a profoundly broken heart?

No, hope was dangerous. It was poison. One ounce of that in your veins and you were a goner. He knew better than that.

He squeezed the tie from Wonwoo’s robe.

He could remember it so clearly. He could remember where he was sitting, what he was thinking, what the house smelled like, how the heat from the fireplace felt on his skin, what was playing on the TV, what they’d eaten for dinner. One minute, his brother was on the couch. The next, he was running out into the storm, never to be seen or heard from again.

And Hoseok wanted to chase after him. He wanted so badly to be right there by his side, to tackle him to the ground, to drag him back inside by the hair if he had to, but he couldn’t. He made it to the door and then he stopped. He couldn’t explain it. To this day, he couldn’t explain it. His feet just stopped. It was like his body could see an invisible barrier that his eyes couldn’t.

He tried to move but he couldn’t budge.

Then there was that light.

It was so bright, so strong. He felt like it went _through_ him. He fell to the floor, hit his head. When he came to, the sun was up. The storm had passed. Wonwoo’s footprints were in the snow. They led to the middle of the yard.

Then they just stopped.

It was like he’d disappeared into thin air.

The tie to his robe was right there on the ground. Hoseok picked it up and never let it go.

How many hours, days, _weeks_ did he spend hoping? For so long, it was all he could do.

He hoped and he hoped and he hoped.

Ironic, wasn’t it?

He remembered that night as vividly as he remembered Jimin’s funeral. Closed casket, of course, because the pavement had done irreversible damage to his pretty face. (The accident that still didn’t make any sense to Hoseok. How had Jimin been ejected from the car? The police never did find what Jimin hit, or what hit Jimin.) All of their friends in their Sunday best, everyone’s eyes swollen from crying. But Jimin’s funeral wasn’t the only service that day. There were fourteen other memorials to be held, some simultaneously due to lack of space at the funeral home,

In a town that small, nobody was spared.

Everyone suffered.

But the pain of burying Jimin was nothing compared to the bone-deep agony of losing Wonwoo.

At least Hoseok knew where Jimin was.

He squeezed the shirt and the tie even harder.

He felt so many emotions at once.

He was scared. He was anxious. He was empty. He was angry. He was sad.

He just wanted to survive.

Weirdly enough, he wanted the others to survive, too. Even Jun. They weren’t his friends but, in a convoluted sort way, they were his responsibility, weren’t they? Didn’t that count for something? Two of them had gone to sleep that night wearing his clothes. He couldn’t just let them die. And hanging around, waiting out the storm in his two-bedroom ranch in the suburbs? That was a death sentence for all of them.

He’d have to leave his home, the place he’d felt safest for the last two years, but it was better than dying.

He packed the tie, the shirt, Jimin’s favorite comic book, Wonwoo’s cologne, Jimin’s hat, his photo album (all the photos on the walls were copies, the originals safely tucked away into an album that he’d rather die than lose) and his research notebook. Everything that was plastered on the walls inside the closet, every single statistic, every figure and every map, was outlined in his notebook. It was, perhaps, the most important thing he owned besides his photo album.

He stood up and took a careful look around, dark eyes scanning every photo, every document, every tiny shred of evidence. He’d poured his heart and soul into this room, unhealthy as it was. He was confident that he knew more about these storms than anyone. Even Yoongi in Effingham didn’t know as much as he did, though he would soon enough. He’d have to if any of them stood a chance.

Would Yoongi have enough room for all of them? He didn’t know. He had no way of contacting him. The truth was that they would show up, knock on the door and hope for the best, hope that he could take all of them, though the others didn’t have to know about that part.

The less they knew, the better.

But getting three people (four if they found Junghwa) two-hundred miles away in a monster blizzard was no easy task. What if Yuju couldn’t get them a truck? What if they were forced to take the Prius? What if they ran out of gas on the way there? What if the car broke down? What if visibility was too low to drive? What if the snow never stopped? What if he heard them laughing again?

_What if?_

_What if_ was at the cornerstone of hope, wasn’t it? Hope couldn’t exist without mind-numbing worry and that nagging, perpetual wondering.

_What if?_

_What if Jimin hadn’t died? What if you’d been in the car with him? What if you’d been the one to answer that woman’s cries for help and ran outside that night? What if Wonwoo had just slipped, hit his head and bled to death in your front yard while you lay on the kitchen floor like a little bitch? What if, Hoseok? What if?_

He couldn’t save Wonwoo and he couldn’t save Jimin and he damn sure couldn’t save the world but maybe he could save Hyojin, Yuju and Jun.

Maybe he could save himself.

Hoseok plucked a hooded sweatshirt from a box on the floor and pulled it over his torso.

He inhaled deeply and thought back to 11th grade. It felt like centuries ago but he could still remember every basketball game, every all-nighter, every trip to the convenience store, every joyride, every inside joke.

After all this time, how was it possible that the hoodie still smelled like his brother?

He zipped his backpack, took one final look at his closet, then shut the light.

He put the bag at the foot of his bed and dove under the covers, suddenly a kid afraid of the dark. Nothing bad could reach him if he was under the blankets, right?

He shut his eyes tightly, trying to keep the memories and that _what if_ s at bay. He needed to sleep, he knew. He’d need his strength for the journey ahead. He’d need his strength to lead.

And that was how Hoseok fell asleep that night, praying that things would be different this time. He fell asleep hugging his arms to his chest, somehow trying to send that embrace to his brother, wherever he was, and to Jimin who he knew was still safe beneath six-feet of Korean soil. He fell asleep with a head full of worries and a broken heart that still leaked agony with every beat but maybe, just maybe, Jung Hoseok fell asleep, hoping against hope and hoping in spite of himself that one day he’d see his brother again and that everything would be just okay.


End file.
